Interlude I: Dark


Joy wasn't quite sure when his and the doctor's goals had aligned. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was destiny.

Maybe it was just because he was in his brain and influenced his decisions.

...

Nah, it was probably the other two.

He looked down at the enormous charred panel in front of him and twisted a knob.


Doctor Lyre turned the knob on his dimensional oscillation detector two ticks to the left, and set it down on the table. The panel on the front flickered slightly, but mostly stayed silent. He twisted around in his swivel chair and pulled open his files for comparison.

He wasn't quite sure what he would find when he had gone into Quantum Mechanics as a Major, but what he had found, no one believed.

Alternate dimensions were real.

He had the math.

There was one connected to this one.

Everything pointed to it.

It was related to humanity.

But everyone he had told had put it off as idle speculation.

He just didn't know why.

It seemed logical to him. Why couldn't others accept it?

Behind him, his monitor beeped. He twisted around and slid over to it. He glanced down at the screen.

He blinked.

These were the exact results he predicted would occur from Multiversal Tampering. It was even staying the same. He picked up the machine and wiggled it around. The number stayed constant.

He started fiddling with the machine and grinned.

He was going to figure out where the signature came from, no matter what the cost.


They were finally making progress!

Joy watched as the doctor's hands danced over the controls. Joy reached out and fiddled with the console for just a moment causing a sickly pulse of yellow before sitting back. Induction could deal with this.

A glowing light bulb centered in the middle of the dais glowed brighter.

Joy, alone against the backdrop of darkness, smirked.


I know I said I would do Author's Notes at the ends of Arcs, but that's not for a couple more chapters, and I wanted to say a few things.

I'm happy with the response I'm getting for this thing. It's really just me going - "Aha!" - and then writing down stuff. So, to that end, all the Guests that have been quantifying all the questions I need to answer have been really helpful. I have basic outlines of how the stuff works in my brain, I just haven't written it yet.

For everyone who has been requesting certain scenes - this is written in 'mostly' chronological order. When something exciting happens to those characters, I'll let you know by writing about them. (But I'm also not going to just leave them in the lurch.)

You've probably noticed by now that I'm on a sort of once a day schedule right now. This is mostly because I'm super excited about this idea. I don't really have the time to continue this schedule, though. It'll probably shift to once or twice a week within the next couple of chapters. (Real life takes precedence, even if it's really boring.)