Chapter 1

"I would be a liar if I claim to be God, but that's the short answer"

The man in the cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirt said to me, he was rather calm despite my sense of panic, I had awoken to find him watching me sleep, he had spoken with no prompting from me, although the thought of who the fuck are you had entered my sleep addled brain. Now I was looking for a weapon that would be easy to get too.

"You won't find one kid, even if you did it wouldn't do you any good, besides I aint here to harm yah"

That's creepy I thought, but obvious, who wouldn't look for a weapon upon finding someone in their room? And kid, this guy looked in his early 20's, at least 15 years younger than me, what I managed to stammer was

"wha?"

He chucked

"look kid, I mean you no harm, and yes I am reading your thoughts, and next despite my looks I am far older then you think, as for the next question the who, what and why, I'll just tell you since I don't have all day ... well I do actually that was just a figure of speech"

I just stared at him dumbfounded

"Look kid, ill dumb this down for you, real k-12 level, I know you aint up on your astrophysics, and I know you flunked out of college. So basically kid you exist in a multi-verse, think of it as billions upon billions of universes, you've seen sliders? OH wait you haven't it never got picked up after the Pilot in this verse, well Ill fix that"

I had no idea what he was talking about Sliders had been one of my favorite shows

"Actually I have seen it; I have always liked Jerry O'Connell" I said The guy laughed

"No you haven't until this moment you only knew him as the fat kid in stand by me, You see kid that's the jist of it I have full control over this multi-verse thing I was telling you about, In fact for the sake of speed I will make you believe me"

And you know what? I did, I knew he could do all he said, but then I began to panic, was he a demon? A genie? An angel?

"No, No, and lastly no, although they all exist somewhere in the multi-verse, some of them can be very dangerous, never tangle with an angel boy-o, I am still trying to remove the stains from my favorite shirt and all because I thought it would be funnier for David to smack goliath in the nads instead of the head. Like I said, I happen to have a good handle over this whole multi-verse, I know what you will ask before you do boy, and again NO I am not God. Although I'd love to chat with him, sooo many questions"

"So back to the point, the verse's are all lined up like a deck of cards you see, but even the cards in the deck don't touch really"

And there floating in front of me was a deck of cards, then they exploded growing in size until I could see space in-between the cards on an atomic level.

"So near, yet so far" He shook his head sadly

"See, some beings can travel to and fro between these verses, them Angels for one, Demons sometimes, and a variety of other such interlopers, some even humans with technology, some with magic, it's all very detailed and involved"

My mind was spinning at what he was telling me.

"Relax, don't panic kid, it's not that bad, I don't know the why of it, you will have to ask the big guy one day. Anyway back to me, it is my favorite subject, You see I was like you once, human, ordinary, trapped on a playing card existence, but something happened to me you see, something that allowed me to slip free of the bonds that tied me to my verse. Trust me when I tell you it was madness, I fell into the space between, somehow I had jumped verse and was stuck in the nothing, but no time exists there kid, I was there for countless millennia before I started to figure things out, and even millions of years more before grasping the power I had somehow gained"

I sat in bed eager to hear more.

"You see kid, people don't jump verses unaided, and that's why I got stuck, not enough power to get to the next card you see. Well the thing that made me able to do that in the first place, allowed me also, with enough time that is, to harness these powers. In that middle space, time doesn't exist, it's like forever and nowhere at once. When I was able to jump again, I found that no time had passed from when I left. I also found I could alter the verse itself with the same ability' I sipped my coffee while listening to him, never once considering I was now fully dressed and at my local star bucks.

"I didn't know it then, but that power was well beyond any of the other beings that roam the verse, SURE some can do it a little bit, Even tech and magic can accomplish it on a small scale, hell there was this alien company in one verse that sold little boxes that tore through verses to alter people into what ever they wanted that was fucken crazy, anyway the bigger the change the harder it is"

I sat watching the ocean as he talked; now I was attired like him, and reclining on a beach chair, my coffee was now a fruity drink

"well that's the big part of who, the how, and now the what kid, you see, I have forever, I can pop in and out of these verses, hell I can even create some of my own, intentionally not through splitting of verses either or through natural means, hell you can do that, just make a choice and you add a card in the deck, don't go to work and there is a verse where you did, and one you didn't, as well as a billion more! NO I can willfully construct one, say one where the cockroach rules? There I just did, soon they will discover dimensional travel and spread out, IT'S going to be HALARIOUS when they invade and discover humans in the nearest verse to them, imagine finding a being 1000 times your size and all your tech means shit to their boot"

He sat there chuckling for awhile

"Oh like I said I am not God, you see I can't create a whole new multi-verse, it's all interwoven, I figure that's what makes him God, he can come up with a whole multi-verse with a fart, just like I create verses"

I now stood on a mountain top somewhere watching the sun rise with him

"Don't get me wrong kid, there are things I can't do, some you would never even guess, can't whistle yep sad to say, also can't carry a tune oh I can make you think I can but deep down I know ill never have that rock band, oh and like I can't make another me for example, Oh I can make a pretty good copy but no powers, in fact there are BILLIONS of me out there, none of them with my power, it's almost like I managed to remove this me from the rules of the system"

I was on a boat now, watching dolphins swim by I started to wonder when he would get to the point