In her padded cell, Carly Shay sat mumbling to herself. "Why would you put me in a high school AU? I'm already in high school, you nub!...No, I don't want to be a Whitesnake fan, it's not canon, and besides, it's just wrong…I know you want to make peace between the Creddie and Seddie factions, but making Freddie a bigamist isn't the answer…" Outside, her friends and family, trembling with worry, discussed her condition with her psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Yang.
"Doctor, don't you have any answers for us?" Spencer was on the verge of tears.
"I think so, but they may not be easy to hear. I'm afraid your sister is suffering from…Multiple Continuity Disorder."
"Don't you mean Multiple Personality Disorder?" asked a puzzled Freddie.
"No, no. That would be easy to handle by comparison. MCD is a much newer phenomenon, and we still know very little about its causes; all we can do is recognize the symptoms."
"Which are?"
"Well, for a victim of multiple personality disorder, the external world remains the same, but the self shatters, if you will, into multiple pieces. For an MCD sufferer, on the other hand, the self remains constant, while the world changes."
"I don't think I understand," said Spencer.
"In essence, Carly believes she's a character in something known as a 'fanfiction'. At any given time, there may be thousands of these 'fanfictions' being written, each one reshaping the whole of Carly's existence to suit the whim of the particular author. Normally, this version of Carly would remain anchored in her own continuity, but, to her mind, she's come unstuck, and she's leaping from story to story."
"And each time she finds herself in a new story by a different author, everything around her is different – including the people." Freddie's eyes glimmered with sudden comprehension.
"Precisely. Some of the alternate continuities might involve only slight changes – you might have a different hairstyle, say, or like a different type of music. But in others, the world could be altered so radically that you would be all but unrecognizable to Carly."
"Good heavens! What a dreadful notion!" cried Rear Admiral Samantha "Indomitable" Puckett of the Royal Navy.
"But you would be just as vulnerable to change yourself, wouldn't you?" asked Freddie. "I mean, you might be a confirmed spinster one moment, and the next you could be some kind of 'black widow' who marries men for their money and then poisons them in their sleep. And you wouldn't even know the change had happened!"
"Well, yes, but I don't think that's a very likely scenario," replied a distinctly nervous-looking Dr. Susan Yang Rodriguez O'Hara Falcone Johnston Mbeki.
The huge man grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and shook her. "Enough of this chattering! What can you do to help my wife?"
"Calm down, President Gibson! I know you're worried about the First Lady's health, but losing your temper won't help her – and would you please put your shirt back on! You're the leader of the free world, for God's sake!"
"I'm sorry. It's just…I feel so helpless."
She sighed. "I understand. All we can do right now is keep our fingers crossed that she manages to snap out of it before she enters the crossover phase."
"What the heck is that?" asked Spencer.
"She starts introducing fictional characters into her hallucinations from other shows that have nothing whatsoever to do with iCarly. It's truly horrible to see."
"I don't see any problem with a bit of intercontinuity crossover now and then. What about you, Pond?" The tall newcomer straightened his bow tie and tipped back his fez.
"Oh, but that's just the beginning. Next comes the AU phase, and then all bets are off. Her entire past can be rewritten at the drop of a hat. She could be a teen mother of triplets, or a lifelong paraplegic, or a ninja assassin. Or perhaps – if the author's fancies are wild enough – she might have grown up on Mars, with a shape-shifting alien father and a cyborg boyfriend!"
"And just what," asked Bensonbot 3000x, aiming his laser arm cannon in a deliberate, menacing fashion, "would be wrong with that?"
"N-nothing, of course. But imagine how terrifying it would be from her point of view if, say, she suddenly found herself the last survivor of a global thermonuclear war, wandering through the ruins of Seattle."
"But," an uncharacteristically thoughtful Sam said slowly, "if that happened to her, wouldn't all of us just be completely erased from exist-
END