SIDE STEP

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SIDE STEP

Today's subject is everything, and I do mean everything.

Sheila Herrick, Cosmologer, Dimensionalist, and until last month the Director and driving force behind Cambridge University's Sidestep Project.

Ms. Herrick's Holy Grail was the science of branch reality, the widely-held theory that the universe we know is just one of an infinite number of parallel dimensions, contradictory alternates branching off from every one of our choices and decisions.

Her theoretical breakthroughs had won her acclaim, but Ms. Herrick was clearly chasing a success that was more than universal.

Ms. Herrick's Sidestep Project, funded by a number of anonymous businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, was striving for practical success.

Her team wanted to perforate the interdimensional barrier, to access, however briefly, those other realities. She wanted physical proof of those branching worlds that existed not before or afte,our but to either side of our now, just a sidestep away.

Six month's lab work with the University's super accelerator seemed to get them nowhere.

But then, slight anomalous results started to crop up.

Ms. Herrick approached her backers for more funding. She made a convincing case. She was certain that though almost too tiny to notice, the anomalies were proof that the barrier had been breached.

All through the Spring and early Summer, the tests continued at the project's Cambridge lab.

But other anomalies were now occurring. One of her team, Richard Burden, began to experience Deja Vu every minute of every day. It was unremitting. After two weeks, Burden left the team on the advice of his psychiatrist.

Ben Croft, another team member, had a run of luck that made him unbeatable at cards and darts. He also found he was able to win convincingly at Billiards with his eyes closed.

Yet another, Louise Berlin, met an identical twin sister she didn't know she had on the London Underground. What was more amazing was that already that week she'd met two new brothers and an uncle the same way.

Were these all symptoms of the perforation they had made in reality?

Aberrations caused by the otherness to which they had been exposed?

Ms. Herrick ran some tests, and found that the nuclear core of the super accelerator was larger and growing.

Croft attempted to reset the field interlocks, but it was no use. That evening, he spontaneously combusted in his local bar.

Ms. Herrick concluded that the perforation had been a gross error. Like matter and anti-matter, the sidestep strands of reality were never meant to meet or cross.

The sidesteps were created by divergence, divergence that should never be rejoined, no matter how small the link. Unless it could be sealed, the rupture they had created would cause a cascade collapse of all the realities of the multiverse as they touched and obliterated one another.

All their attempts failed.

In desperation, Ms Herrick tried one last option.

She overloaded the super accelerator.

At this time, we do not know if her extreme action was successful, or if an irreversible death-blow had been struck, that will eventually cause reality to bleed out.

The universe may have already ended, and we just haven't noticed it yet.

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