"I have pulled from The Knowledge tales from the Event that ravaged two universes. I start at the beginning and will tell the important parts, and while there are many stories to be told, this will be quick." Chief Archivist of the Catalogers.
“Many things have been culled from this universe, many lives lost, some heroically, some fruitlessly, but everything and everyone met has had an impact. Some people and places are the same regardless of the world on which it lay, it spreads like an infection.”
“A smart man once said ‘There is more than one of everything.”
The Event 4 - Dopplegang’land E “ Jack Lazarus Versus John Phoenix, Immortal”
The battle ended or so the newsmen and women assumed. They had lost sight of the two women and had not been able to relocate either of them. John held a hand to his right ear and listened for any Comm chatter, but since the brief burst during the halfway point of the battle they had remained silent.
John turned to regard the man in the cell with him, a carbon copied duplicate. He frowned. "I remember that look," the other prisoner said. John cocked an eyebrow at him. "I remember that too."
"We have never before met, is that a correct assumtion?" The other man nodded. "Are you a time traveler?" He shrugged. "I don't understand this at all."
"That's true, you don't understand any of this yet. First, you do not feel the overwhelming urge to murder me?" John shook his head. "That is easily answered. The urge is to kill your doppleganger, and its an urge that you cannot withstand, because it comes directly from Pandamonium who has no idea what she causes yet. She will eventually figure it out and sacrifice herself to save the whole of this reality."
John thought for a moment and his eyes widened slightly. "You aren't a copy crafted by the whole of the universe, or an Echo as the 'scientists' claimed, you are unique. Which means...somehow you are me?"
The other man nodded. "Jack Lazarus," he held out his hand. "I am you later in life, towards the end actually. My last resurrection to be even more precisily. I came back to this era because I had to, because when I was you I remember this conversation and had to be here to complete the circle." John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I know this is odd, and the first and only time that I have ever crossed paths with one of my prior lives. But it is nessessary."
"The finale?" Jack nodded. "Am I the only other present, aside from you that is." Jack shook his head. "Who?"
"The first is here as well. This is or was your home universe in the beginning. The Cascade claims us during this Event, and then we play in the vast multiverse for a time before coming here as you, and then returning once again as me." John's mouth frowned. "I know we hate time travel."
"So I guess I know what I have to do then, find Pandamonium and explain to her what the hell is going on in her universe and persuade her to find a way to fix it. Have you kept up the journals?" Jack nodded. "This ought to be interesting then," he smirked.
"Oh believe me it is."
TBC
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