prompt: case, title: all acquaintence be forgot in misc. flash fiction

You may have noticed a growing emphasis inside what’s left of our shared culture on alternative Earths, parallel dimensions, multiverses. Roads not taken, what-ifs, mulligans for all regrets. You might think it just a spontaneous fad or the work of quite-lazy executives who need a guaranteed audience of existing properties to sustain a corner office. But the truth is much wilder than that hardly-won cynicism in your guts believes. It’s an intentional message, just for you individually. For you specifically. You didn’t get our subtler hints, so here we are being blunt instead.

It’s of a piece with what we’ve been seeding in about rebirth and immortality, regenerative and otherwise, throughout sci-fi and fantasy. The Highlander’s inability to stay dead, Doctor Who’s tendency to pop back up again, slightly remixed, all of that. The entire entertainment-industrial complex focused on leaving you a breadcrumb trail, this panoply of hints, but you’re so caught up in believing you’re just like everyone, you’re never going to solve the puzzle without more. You’re too caught up in the assumption of personal mundanity that you believe has served you well. But that was just for us the rest of us, not you, you’re different and now it can all be told.

You aren’t going to end in the way the rest of us will. We won’t say you can’t die, not exactly, but however you experience the transitions, they aren’t going to stick. You’ll come back again and again and again. Maybe on different timelines, maybe as different versions of yourself but you won’t go anywhere else for long. You’re stuck here as a witness, an endless witness to the beauties and horrors of the human race. Better get used to it. That’s what all these movies and shows have been trying and trying to tell you. Trying to prepare you for. This.

You’re not going to end, even if you seem to end for those around you, you will change or your surroundings will change, but you are going to be carrying this burden of humanity until there’s no longer such a thing, maybe even longer still. We will all be but dust while you wade through these billions and trillions, our follies, our monstrosities and miracles, all of it. We’re asking you to gird your loins, prepare to share the wisdom you find, despite never passing on. Maybe you’ll be Cleopatra Thursday. Maybe you’ll be me yesterday. We’re all just knots on the same string of souls, balled up together, after all. Your knot, just a whole lot bigger and stranger than the rest of our individual experiences. Go forth with this knowledge and do good with it. We have as much faith in you as anyone can muster in anything these days. “New Year, New You” as they always say. But for you, it’s literal. Whoever you want to be, here you are now. All it takes, in your case, is to decide that it’s so. So, decide on something amazing. Shine.