Pt 26: The Spire

Friday June 10th, 2016
8:27 am (6 5/8 hours of sleep)

Jutting like a spear tip aimed toward the heavens, the Bureaucratic Spire loomed ahead waiting for me. I was late for my appointment with this realities grounds keeper. I had a matter of universal security to discuss with her. At least that was the story that got me the appointment.

Built with granite and marble, the inside of The Spire was depressingly similar to many of the Universal Management & Maintenance buildings I had seen and subsequently destroyed. It turns out most alternate universes were, but for slight differences, the exact same. While yet others were completely and frighteningly different. It would seem the universe that housed The Spire was one of the "normal" universes. I would have no remorse for the destruction of this reality.

The grounds keeper's personal assistant met me in the lobby and with no more than a cursory glance to my person proceeded to escort me further up and in to that bureaucratic nightmare. Short cubicles crammed in to tight office spaces with workers sitting shoulder to shoulder drudging along in their near slave labor of filing and stamping.

After a few floors and more depressed people than I ever care to see, the Personal Assistant left me standing outside an unassuming door marked with nothing more than the interdimensional symbol for custodial and maintenance of the universe. After less than an hour but more than twenty minutes, the door swung open and a voice like a mouse ushered me forth.

The High Custodian Mistress Ballia Turonga, as was her full title, sat behind a panel inset to her desk. The panel looked remarkably similar to the one I had interacted with on my first adventure in the back rooms of reality so many universes ago. It had all manners of buttons, levers, lights, and other pieces of mechanical instrumentation and was going about its merry way with just some guidance from The Mistress.

She sat there, an eye of disapproving appraisal cast over me as she asked me the nature of the emergency that brought me forth. Not very many people were supposed to know of the Ministry of Universal Management & Maintenance. My reply came, as I took a small step with each word. Having heard my concocted impending disaster and found it lacking, she shook her head and lightly pressed a button labeled 'security'.

I knew I didn't have much time. Shooting forward and shoving Mistress Turonga over, I looked for that unlabeled lever. Though I had found in many other realities with many other panels that the color changed, there was always an unlabeled lever which would spell certain doom for whichever reality housed it. With searching eyes I finally came across it, the color of forest green. Putting my entire bodily weight into the switching of that lever, a familiar light changed the colors of the room and that cacophonous roar upon rising up, put a smile on my lips. As emotions drained from the room, the Mistress screamed at me, the sounds of which never reached my ears. I let out a hearty laugh as the universe collapsed around me. I was one step closer to home.

Pt 15: The Panel

Monday May 30th, 2016
8:26 am (7 hours of sleep)

Tumbling through forever, I found I couldn't speak. I had found myself along passages of time and space long since forgotten by the children of the infinite. What seemed like eons and millenia adrift along corridors and passages, I came upon a door labeled "maintenance". How I managed to open said door I cannot say but I know one thing is for certain. I should never have crossed the mantle of that ill fated room.

It seemed like a natural boiler room. All except the far end had a large panel with all sorts of buttons, dials, levers, and many colored blinking lights. All of these seemed to be labeled with some function of the universe from causing rain to fall to creating planets and other celestial bodies. I would have had to exhibit a level of self control I knew in my wanderings of the infinite, I had long since lost.

I approached the panel all aglow with thoughts and ideas of what this might mean for reality. Did I, at this very moment, have the power to create and destroy the very fabric of what we had ever known? I inspected this panel of creation and realized there had been someone here long before my own admittance to this back room of reality. Some switches had what looked like a layer of dust on them while yet others seemed newly installed and shiny.

As I inspected the panel I noticed some buttons and levers were pushing and pulling themselves. One button labeled "birth" kept pressing itself with a speed no mortal man would be able to track. another labeled "death" seemed to be attempting to keep up with it's counterpart. All the buttons and levers each having there own distinct purpose clearly labeled was fascinating enough, though through my inspections I became transfixed with one particular lever the color of cobalt. Not because I knew what would occur should I use it for it's designated purpose but because I didn't know it's purpose. It was ancient in design with a layer of dust showing it's neglect but what interested me most was the fact of it being unlabeled. Something of it's mystery was so enticing that I had to interact with it.

I found my hands upon that mysteriously beautiful piece of cobalt equipment That now I wish I had never laid eyes on and with almost no force at all had flipped it. What came next is hard to describe. The senses of a physical being like myself don't seem to e acute enough to take all that I witnessed in. Several colors and hues that don't exist upon any known spectrum appeared to come from within the machine and swallowed all other colors from the room. My senses overcome and failing me, I started to question my sanity as a deafening sound akin to the chaotic roaring of a battlefield though not like any field of battle I have witnessed. As the sound grew in crescendo all emotions of awe or wonderment seemed to have been absorbed by the panel only to be replaced by dread and a sense of impending death. Not my own death but the death of everything. The death of reality. I fought with the switch attempting to will the thing to it's previous position. However, nothing I did nor any number of profanities forced the object of my previous fascination to it's starting position.

As the cacophonous roar grew ever more I saw upon the floor printed as plain as you are reading this right now, a sign which read, "Caution: interfering with the workings of this panel may cause an imbalance and subsequent total collapse of reality. Have a pleasant day". The reading of the sign was the last thing I experienced as the hallways and backrooms of reality collapsed into nothing.