Chapter 14. “Parallel Universe Free Throw Line: Your Redemption Ticket is Sold Out”

As the quantum timer went to zero, Marcus used the family trust to purchase the right to shoot jump balls in six parallel universes. Gold-plated wormholes opened up at his feet, and each universe's basket hung a different version of Elena - a nun, a whore, the Queen of Wall Street ... "Take your pick brother," his Bitcoin spine flickered, "these could be some of your hardcore fans."

Lucas was pinned to the free throw line at the intersection of space and time, the gravitational pull of twelve universes tearing at the mutant limb. Elena's mycelial network suddenly buzzed with a swarm of bees, and all the poor people of the parallel universes looked up at the same time, fluorescent bugs with vengeance codes written by their mothers crawling out of their eye sockets.

"Thank you Mr. Marcus for purchasing 648 universes." The wreckage of Rayne precipitated out of the black hole, its mechanical heart connected to a Federal Reserve terminal, "You now owe 648 trillion dollars, overdue for the harvesting of your germ cells to settle the debt."

Marcus suddenly ripped off his gold-plated face, revealing the same burn scars as Lucas, "Didn't expect that, did you? You're the one who got thrown away!" He plays the adoptive home surveillance - the baby Raine carried away in the fire had bare ankles, it was the swaddling clothes in the dumpster that carried the eagle head birthmark.

Elena's mycelium suddenly stabs into Lucas's eyeballs, forcing a hidden memory to play: when he was five, the Marcus family sent someone to switch DNA reports and laser-wash away his real birthmark. "Your hate is our best sustenance." A network of mycelium surfaces the old Marcus' patent books for bio-batteries, each one stamped with Lucas' bloody handprint.

The parallel universe begins to collapse, and the tycoons scream as they upload their consciousness to the basketball-shaped escape pods. Marcus kicks open the wormhole gate and kicks Lucas into the darkest of universes: "Go be the king of your eternal trash!"

Moments into the descent, Elena's quantum residue flashes. She rips open her chest cavity, and six universes of fluorescent bugs converge to form her mother's holographic last words, "RH- not the blood type, it's the button for Reset Humanity."

The moment Lucas grabs the edge of the wormhole, the basketball courts of all the parallel universes suddenly explode. The bone-spiked baskets of the poor burst into pulses, trapping the rich conscious bodies in an infinite loop of 'last shots' - they repeat the basket-smashing maneuver eternally, their brains splattered into Spaulding's stripes.

The moment Marcus raises the championship trophy on the other side of the wormhole, with 'Holt' engraved on the base, the trophy suddenly mutates into a burning blast cabinet. Rayne's mechanical voice came out of the flames, "The real rule of the game is-"

The doors of the cabinet blasted open, and the charred mother crawled towards her two babies. This time, she pushed them both into the fire.