Everything is connected. Every world is neighbored by another through portals—doors, if you will. There are parallel universes, mirrors of another with a few minor differences. Well, they're not always minor. Like, there's another Earth with world peace. That's not so minor. Oh, and there's another one where the apocalypse came early—with zombies. Ooh! And there's another one where—
Wait, let me start over.
Okay, so, my name is Ana. My thing, what I do is…well, I guess I keep thingssss…right? I'm not good with explaining things…It's like I receive mail that isn't mine. Occasionally something ends up here and I send it back. Sometimes with magic, sometimes through a portal—the door—it came through. I travel like that a lot. BUT, when I'm bored and have nothing to do, I go to this alternate dimension—yes, there is a difference between parallel universes and alternate dimensions—where I can see into different universes and…well, I go to them. Through portals. Like this one time I was looking at the Camelot multiverses—if you don't know what that means, you're a dipwad—and in one of them, Arthur has magic.
There's also universes where the sole difference is that someone was sent there through a portal—usually by accident. They fell in or something and their presence impacts the rest of the story. And sometimes someone falls into the original…that's always confusing…ANYWAY, I'm not the only person who has this job; there are kind of a lot of us. We're born with the ability to feel and to see the portals. It kind of gives you a warm, tugging feeling, letting you know it's there, and then you can see it; a sort of soft, colored glow surrounding a place or an object. Once we know where a portal is, we're connected to it and can feel when someone is getting too close; in danger of falling in. We keep that from happening. Except for this one time there was this girl, Ena, who was over a portal leading to Middle Earth. A shed had been built over it and, since I could feel she was in some way connected to that place, I let her fall in. I kept track of her, of course, watching from an alternate dimension, and I think the decision was for the better. She learned about her parents and made friends, got a boyfriend AND went on a great adventure. But I digress.
Somehow, I don't know the reasons behind it, there are people who know when a child is born with the abilities of…my people, I guess? And we're all brought to live together and learn how to use our abilities to perform our God-given responsibility. We're taught to feel the portals, and then we learn to go through one the right way—without falling flat on our faces or breaking a bone—and then we learn to read the people there. We can see into their minds, see what they know and learn about their world. It keeps us from getting in trouble. Usually. What I mean to say is it doesn't really work that way for me, not always. I and a few — very few— other people are advanced. Advanced meaning, when we read someone, we get everything. Everything they know, everything that's happened to them, everything they've done. It's…overwhelming. It leaves us confused and lost and wondering who we are. This happened to me and, like I said, very few others. It's heard of but very, very rare. My experience, however, was different. When I went through the portal, I found a whole group of people. Upon contact with them, my mind was filled with their life stories, all at the same time and it scared me. I was immediately in need of an escape, a violent escape based on what I've been told, and apparently someone in the group I'd met knew some form of martial arts because I certainly didn't and I attacked them. My teacher—chaperone, if you will, had to wrestle me back through the portal and, as the procedure went, they tried to remove the excess information from my head. Something went wrong and now…Now I'm me. Something in my brain was damaged I guess and occasionally I'll have fits of violent anger or panic attacks. It's strange; I never know what's going to cause an outburst.
Now would be a good time to mention that I have a very disorganized thought pattern, as I'm sure you've noticed, yes? It's a result of what happened to me, which I don't remember much of. I was told what happened by the people who tried to help me. I just attacked the group of men with fighting I shouldn't have known and they couldn't fix me. That's all. But, I can still travel which is good and I frequently find myself in very interesting situations, like when I couldn't keep this Australian surgeon chick from falling through a portal and then I couldn't find a way to get her back. It didn't matter in the end because it turns out someone else wanted her to go to Middle Earth, so that was pretty cool. And I know, I know, why am I still travelling if I'll probably just kill someone? My control in information flow has improved a bit and also, I'm kind of reckless. There, that's your not-very-good answer.
Well, there's your lesson on portals for the day. I hope this helps explain some things you may have been wondering about.
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Just something to explain No Good Thief, It WAS a Normal Day and anything else I might publish. Ana will be mentioned in other stories. I'm working on one right now where she goes to the Inheritance Cycle universe. Let me know if you want that to be in a second chapter or an entirely different story.
Plz review and I love you all!
