will the rain ever stop?

Stiv: EMILLY

Stiv: EM

I'd just gotten home from an extended trip into limbo--literally; I spent two and a half hours on a dark bus, driving in circles, waiting for them to remember they needed to take me home, too--and I was a bit groggy from the day. I wasn't in my best cognitive mode when God chimed in.

Stiv: I don't think I've ever been more scared by anything than the prospect that my own clone is going to kill me or the fact that I could be a clone.

Stiv: Actually, that would mean that I should be trying to find the original.

Stiv: Unless the original died alone time ago, and I am but one clone in a series of clone experiments. Experiments that all went horribly wrong, I am assuming, by the looks of things

emilly.orr: Slow down

emilly.orr: Start from the top

I wasn't sure yet whether I'd need stimulants or euphorics to deal with this, but someone had the wrong idea about reality, and I just wasn't sure who it was, just then.

Stiv: Emilly, I know you and a number of other people hear me say this a lot

Stiv: but I think Ive gone insane

emilly.orr: Why specifically?

Stiv: Ok so, I watched Moon and have you seen that?

emilly.orr: Oh yes

Stiv: Ok so

Stiv: I was like

Stiv: I'd be more comfortable, after thinking it over

Stiv: if I was a clone

Stiv: I'd feel a bit more relaxed, less pressure

Stiv: you know

emilly.orr: Until you started coughing up blood

Still say it's a reasonable reply.

Stiv: and then I started thinking more and more about why I was created

Stiv: I as in the series of clones

Stiv: So I thought, who would make us?

Stiv: And then I realized

Stiv: I WOULD

Stiv: THE ORIGINAL

Stiv: That bastard

Consciousness began to filter in. Waiiiit, my brain said. Is he serious or is he messing with me? I just don't know, sometimes. But I tried to parse it while he went on.

Stiv: I know what he's trying to prove

Stiv: or disprove rather

Stiv: QUANTUM MECHANICS

Stiv: Through violating MANY WORLDS

Stiv: BY PLACING THEM ALL IN ONE WORLD

emilly.orr: So, you're thinking, in the future, you know much more about science than you do now, so you created a series of clones, to...get drunk and be attractive to MILFs?

Stiv: BIGGER THAN THAT

emilly.orr: Wau

Stiv: I mean, that's probably what he's doing

Stiv: that bastard

emilly.orr: I see.

emilly.orr: So, is your job to...stop him, or help him, or...?

I was still trying to work out what was going on in God's head. (I know, I know, mysteries of the universe, inscrutable is the mind of Stiv, yada yada yada...) What exact combination of homework, booze and videogames had brought this on? Precisely?

Stiv: Emilly, I violate time symmetry

emilly.orr: You do?

Stiv: We do

Stiv: Ok so you

Stiv: You you

Stiv: Are here

Stiv: in this

emilly.orr: Yes

Stiv: This being whatever we are in

Stiv: nevermind, I wont get into that but

Stiv: you are here

Stiv: BUT here, I am and the rest of us along with that bastard who created us

Stiv: that bastard being me

Stiv: or

Stiv: the original

Stiv: wait

emilly.orr: Right

emilly.orr: whom you seem to despise

emilly.orr: Even though he's you

Stiv: Well ok let me try that again

It began to sink in this was worse than being commissioned to write the Gospel According to Stiv, with the switchblades and the hookers and the stripper paradise with eighth-dimension booze imported in.

And ninja assassins. I always forget the ninja assassins part. It was so insane. Ninja assassins sent out to kill the One True Stiv, that camouflaged themselves as...him...to...

Wait....

Stiv: So, we are all here because in a many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, he is USING US

Stiv: to see when he will die

Stiv: OR how he COULD die

emilly.orr: He doesn't know how he could die?

emilly.orr: Alcohol poisoning is up there

Stiv: He's trying to use the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to become immortal

Stiv: THAT BASTARD

Stiv: he's so clever

emilly.orr: Canny, even

Stiv: wait

Stiv: wait

Stiv: Unless, this is a symmetrical timeline

Stiv: and I'm now realizing

Stiv: fuck

Stiv: Fuck, I could be that bastard

Stiv: or

Stiv: no wait

emilly.orr: Well, you are in college

Stiv: shit

Stiv: Fuck, Emilly, what if I am him and he started this

Stiv: fuck

Stiv: Oh man

emilly.orr: Then...at some point you'll get enough money

emilly.orr: To fund quantum-mechanic research into growing yourself

emilly.orr: And dispersing your clones through a multitude of separate, yet incredibly similar realities

emilly.orr: Likely not the world without shrimp

emilly.orr: But several different reality sets

emilly.orr: Just waiting for Stiv to appear

emilly.orr: And die horrifically

Stiv: Emilly, I think I already did that once and I'm now realizing that. Holy god.

Stiv: Time is amazing

emilly.orr: It is.

It's also, at times, deeply odd. Or maybe that's not time, maybe that's just Stiv.

Stiv: I think I need more time to think this over

emilly.orr: Possibly more alcohol as well.

Stiv: I always have this weird feeling of comfort when I find some new paranoia or psychosis

Stiv: I wonder why that is

emilly.orr: In you, or just in general?

Stiv: In me

Stiv: hmm

Stiv: ooooooh

Stiv: that makes more sense

emilly.orr: It does?

Stiv: We rarely put ourselves into danger where the odds arent in our favor

emilly.orr: Generally true.

Though I did think the 'we' to which he referred was his clones, not humanity at large, which is how I took it.

Stiv: He must have done this to experiment with the limits of our sanity

emilly.orr: Ah. Canny fellow indeed.

Stiv: So that feeling is, what? The many worlds interpretation would see that as an observed sane person (relatively speaking) or an unobserved snap

Stiv: into insanity

Stiv: or if our eventual insanity LEADS to our death and he's trying to pinpoint what stresses cause that

Stiv: that would be less messy

Stiv: no wait, just as messy

emilly.orr: Or, you're all wired

emilly.orr: And he's recording everything

Stiv: Oooh fuck

Stiv: I didnt even think of the possibily of being an artificial construct replica of the original

Stiv: damn

Stiv: If so, he's laughing about the irony of me spending so much time on computers

Stiv: in a computer

Stiv: that bastard

emilly.orr: Oh, well, that's going to happen

emilly.orr: The creators of the greater games like to play them

emilly.orr: Thus, their creations like to play them

Stiv: That bastard

Stiv: You see? He's a bastard

emilly.orr: So is your objective to win, or to defeat him, or just to survive?

I admit, at this point--along with giggling on occasion--I was halfway buying into this.

Stiv: Well

Stiv: if I defeat him

Stiv: let's see

Stiv: our realities will shift so I become the original

Stiv: and therefore, have won

Stiv: so he wins there, because I become him

Stiv: Survival plays out best for both of us

Stiv: which is just what he wants

Stiv: for now

emilly.orr: Likely

Stiv: God, he's a bastard

emilly.orr: Definitely a twisty thinker

Stiv: I was more comfortable being a clone than I am now that I feel like I'm just a participant in the quantum suicide/immortality experiment

Stiv: I'm going to bed before I question existence

emilly.orr: Might be best.

Stiv: Yes

Stiv: Good night Em

emilly.orr: Good night, Lord.

And he poofed into wherever God poofs, when he's not conscious and actively messing with the space-time continuum. Or sending Lily "Crusher" Killowski to beat down Borg.

Here's to hoping he slept it off. Or at least, upon rising, found the quantum key generator to return to Stiv Prime's lab. Now that would be amusing to write about.