"Come on! I wanna be let in!" The witch pouted as she placed her hand impatiently on her hips and began to scowl impatiently, but the black hooded warden showed no signs of allowing her entry.
"You not permitted to enter", he exclaimed simplistically. "Master no allow it…"
"What other worlds are in the multiverse?", the Wizard asked as the pair had started to walk away from the bed where Frank rested and began to walk towards the edge of the room. When he thought that there was nowhere else to go, Dorothy extended her arm and tapped her hand on a section of the celestial backdrop, which opened a concealed and hidden door. The pair stepped through and entered what appeared to the Wizard another dark void.
"I've never been, but I hear from Frank that there are so many other wondrous worlds out there, Oscar. Planets that are teeming with life. Worlds that have dragons and elves. Futuristic cities and primitive ones. Even people with extraordinary abilities and larger than life figures. Everything that you could possibly think of or imagine exists out there, just waiting to be discovered…"
Dorothy then stopped walking and the Wizard followed suit. She turned and behind a glass wall was a humanoid figure wearing a white dress that closely resembled Glinda. However, the mannequin-like figure simply stared across the room and to the opposite wall.
"Remember how I said that witches could age from stress, Oscar?"
The Wizard nodded his head.
"I've been studying witches for a long time. How they live. How they work. How they function on a biological basis. A witch starts out as an infant, just like us. They age regularly until they hit adolescence. Then, the aging process slows. Considerably. They don't reach adulthood until they are about two hundred years old. It takes about five hundred years before they reach middle age. Most witches live for about one thousand years…"
…"So much for fitting in", the Wizard muttered under his breath. Dorothy then pointed to the standing, but unmoving humanoid body. "You see, I was trying to figure out why witches fly and where they get their powers from. And for many years, this was a mystery to me. But witches are different than ordinary humans. They have such a lightweight skeleton, and their bones are hollow…"
The Wizard turned to her. "Do you know why this is?"
"They are descended from the Faeries…", Dorothy replied. "Their physiology is different."
"Okay, so who exactly are the Faeries?"
"The faeries are extraplanar creatures who travel from one universe to another. They enchant different worlds by procreating with different species. On Oz, they happened to procreate with ordinary humans. The witches are an offspring of this. In other areas of the multiverse, they are believed to be deities." Dorothy then placed her hand on her chin. "Regardless, it is somehow their genes that convey these abilities. I am still trying to figure out the mechanism for it."
"Genes?"
"Yeah. Genes. You've heard of Charles Darwin, right Oscar?"
He nodded.
"Well, he may not have known what genes are, but they are essentially hereditary traits that are passed from parents to their offspring. In different worlds, evolutionary biology behaves differently, but when there are unlimited possibilities, what we—what Frank knows, at least—is that life forms behave similarly across different worlds and universes. The architecture of life is still limited, Oscar, so you have the same species popping up an unlimited number of times throughout these different universes…"
The Wizard's mind was racing. He was still trying to absorb all this information that Dorothy was telling him. Even though he had a scientific mind, he had trouble keeping up. A vast and infinite space with unlimited planets and stars and universes? A reality that had no end? He couldn't even begin to wrap his own mind around such a concept. And here he was thinking he was delivering divine and unique invention to the Ozian people when, in fact, he was yet another insignificant being in what was really a reality that had no end. How many times in other worlds did the exact same story play out? These thoughts were so fascinating to the Wizard that they became all-consuming.
Dorothy then interrupted his thought process. "You asked me about the prophecy you've heard about…", she said cooly. "Follow me." The pair continued to walk in silence. They soon entered a cavernous room where she signaled him to stop.
"Prepare yourself, Oscar…", she whispered to him.
"Prepare myself?", the Wizard asked. "What do you mean pre—" But before he could finish his sentence, he began to feel heavy as an ethereal figure separated from his body. It took on a life of its own as it began to walk away from him. When it finally turned around and faced him, the Wizard could only gasp and look at it wide-eyed and in shock.
The ethereal form…was him. However, he looked older, much like the way he looked when Dorothy showed him visions of the future.
"Why am I here, Dorothy", the older version of himself began to speak. "Answer me."
"You are here to tell your younger self about the prophecy and your place in it", she answered. "I direct you…"
"Yes, this makes sense that I would do so", the elderly Oscar said, whose hair was now completely grey, and his suit now worn. But like his younger self, he was still considerably well-dressed. "For I was never informed about what the prophecy was when I was younger. I now give you the opportunity to learn what I had never learned." The old man then looked at his younger self with sternness in his voice. "Listen closely…"
"You have been told that you are the center of a prophecy. That you would descend from the heavens and defeat a Wicked Witch who terrorized the land. Believing this to be true, you then helped banish Evanora from the Emerald City. When you did this, you believed the prophecy to be fulfilled…"
He then paused before continuing. "But this is not what the prophecy speaks of."
"You are still part of the prophecy, but not in the way you think, for what has been told to you has been misinterpreted and incomplete. The prophecy speaks of someone descending from the heavens and killing a Wicked Witch. But this is not done by you…"
The old man then glanced towards Dorothy as he still addressed his younger self. "You have already conversed with the one whom the prophecy centers on, the one who would do this killing." He then locked eyes with himself once again. "You are here to stop her. The prophecy was spoken of by one who harbored deceitful and malicious intent. Whether you intend to or not, you exist to prevent the prophecy from becoming true. The prophecy warns of your failure. It does not warn of you…"
The younger Wizard looked at his older self. He merely nodded his head.
"Then so it shall be", the old man replied. "You will do as Dorothy requests. Brace yourself for what comes next. That is all I will tell you." His older self then disappeared.
The cavernous room became quiet once again. The Wizard stared at the place his future self once stood. He didn't quite know what to think of all this. Dorothy slowly walked several steps towards him and placed her hand on his. "Come. He does not have much time", she said. "Frank wants to say goodbye to you."