STEP ONE: ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVER THE MULTIVERSE
Sarah Chen wakes up in a Taiwanese farmhouse she doesn't remember entering, wearing someone else's jacket, holding a security badge that says VISITOR - ESCORT REQUIRED.
Her head pounds. Her mouth tastes like regret and cheap beer. Last night was her friend's bachelorette party in Kaohsiung. This morning she is... somewhere else.
The jacket smells like ozone and something that makes her sinuses itch. Sharp, clean, and a hint of bleach.
"Oh good, you're awake."
A woman in tactical gear appears in the doorway. She's holding two cups of coffee and looks far too alert for whatever ungodly hour this is.
"I'm Melania Reyes. You wandered past three security checkpoints last night. Impressive, considering you were singing Taylor Swift."
Sarah's brain struggles to process this. "Where am I?"
"Site-7. Torii Foundation. Highly classified location. You've seen things you shouldn't have seen, which means we need to have a conversation."
"About what?"
Reyes hands her a coffee. "About whether you'd like your memory erased or a job offer."
Sarah blinks. "Is this a cult?"
"Worse. It's government-adjacent bureaucracy with cosmic implications."
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STEP TWO: LEARN THAT REALITY IS ACTUALLY REALITIES (PLURAL)
They sit in a windowless conference room that smells like whiteboard markers and existential crisis. Reyes pulls up a holographic display that makes Sarah's hangover immediately worse.
"Okay. Crash course. Reality isn't singular. It's plural. Infinite Earths, infinite timelines, infinite versions of you making different choices. With me so far?"
"No."
"Perfect. So. Sometimes these realities develop weak points. We call them fissures. Think of reality like a tapestry. Pull one thread wrong and—"
The hologram shows what looks like someone pulling a thread out of fabric. The whole thing unravels in slow motion.
"—yeah. That."
Sarah drinks her coffee. It's terrible. She drinks more anyway.
"So you're telling me there are doorways to alternate Earths. And you people— what? Monitor them?"
"Not just monitor. We explore them. Document them. Make sure nobody accidentally collapses the multiverse." Reyes grins. "It's actually pretty fun. Except when it's horrifying."
"How often is it horrifying?"
"Honestly? Like thirty percent of the time."
"And the other seventy percent?"
"Bureaucracy. So much bureaucracy. You have no idea."
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STEP THREE: MEET THE PEOPLE WHO JUMPED INTO THE MULTIVERSE AND SOMEHOW MADE IT A CAREER
Reyes takes Sarah on a tour. The farmhouse is bigger than it looks. Underneath are labs, sleeping quarters, a cafeteria, and something called a "Gateframe Chamber" that hums at a frequency that makes Sarah's teeth hurt.
"That's the Gateframe," Reyes says, pointing at a massive ring of metal covered in panels that look like they were designed by someone who watched too much sci-fi. "It stabilizes the fissure so we can actually walk through safely. Well. Mostly safely."
"Mostly?"
"Fourteen percent of crossings have complications. But that's why we have Wayfinders."
She holds up a device that looks like a smartwatch had a baby with a Geiger counter.
"This is a quantum beacon. Keeps you anchored to the baseline reality, this reality, so you don't get lost in the space between worlds. That space is called the Nexus. It's basically quantum foam having an identity crisis. Time works weird there. Gravity is optional. People report seeing their reflections move wrong. Fun stuff."
Sarah is beginning to suspect this isn't a normal hangover hallucination.
"So who actually goes through these fissures?"
"Expeditionary Teams. Jumpers. We've got fifteen teams stationed around the world. ET-1 is based here, they're like the poster children. Very competent. Slightly traumatized. The leader, Jackson, has this whole stoic commander thing going on. Then there's Mika, who's brilliant but sad for complicated reasons. Teal, who's obsessed with finding the 'perfect' reality. And Jonas, who fixes things and makes terrible jokes."
"They sound made up."
"Yeah, they get that a lot."
They pass a lab where someone is arguing with a plant that appears to be growing backward. They pass a security station where three people are monitoring screens showing places that definitely aren't Earth. Or at least, not this Earth.
"We've got three main divisions," Reyes continues. "Watchdogs, that's me, we handle security, containment, making sure civilians don't stumble into fissures or, you know, drunkenly wander into classified facilities."
"I feel attacked."
"You should. Then there's Locksmiths. They build the tech. Wayfinders, Gateframes, probes, all that. Brilliant weirdos. I love them. And then there's the Surface Dwellers. Eighty percent of the staff. They think they work for a normal humanitarian NGO. They do good work. They have no idea we're also running a multiversal containment operation."
"That seems unethical."
"Oh, it's super unethical. But it's also necessary. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone knew about fissures? About infinite realities? Society would collapse. Or we'd get a million cults. Or both."
"So you lie."
"We maintain operational security through selective information distribution."
"You lie."
"Yeah. We lie a lot. It's actually in the job description."
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STEP FOUR: UNDERSTAND THAT EVERY REALITY HAS RULES (AND THEY'RE ALL SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT)
They reach a room full of screens showing probe footage from different realities. Reyes points at one.
"Okay. Take a look at this. That's R-MN-0042-DELTA-Y. Divergence point: the printing press was invented three hundred years earlier. Result: Renaissance happened sooner, industrial revolution happened sooner, they hit the moon in 1897. Cool, right?"
Sarah watches footage of a Victorian-style city with impossible architecture and airships that look like they were designed by Jules Verne on steroids.
"That's... actually really cool."
"Right? But here's the thing. We can't just go there and take their technology. Or warn them about wars. Or save people. We have the Prime Directive."
"Like Star Trek?"
"Exactly like Star Trek. No interference. No contact with alternate selves. No technology transfer. No playing god. We observe. We document. We leave."
"And if you don't?"
Reyes's expression darkens. "Bad things happen. Realities destabilize. Timelines collapse. People get hurt. We learned this the hard way. Multiple times."
She pulls up another screen. This one shows a reality that's flickering, unstable, like a TV with bad reception.
"That's what happens when someone breaks the rules too hard. The whole reality starts unraveling. We call it ontological collapse. It's basically reality cancer. And we caused it by trying to help."
"Jesus."
"Yeah. So now we have rules. Lots of rules. And we break them constantly because we're human and humans are bad at watching people suffer without helping. But we try to follow them. Most of the time."
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STEP FIVE: REALIZE THIS JOB IS EQUAL PARTS ADVENTURE AND TRAUMA
They end up in the cafeteria. The coffee here is somehow worse than the conference room coffee. Sarah drinks it anyway. She's committed now.
"So what's the catch?" she asks.
"Catch?"
"If you're offering me a job. Then there's a catch. There's always a catch."
Reyes is quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice has lost its cheerful tour-guide quality.
"The catch is that you'll see things you can't unsee. Versions of yourself making different choices. Worlds where people you love are dead. Or alive when they should be dead. Or never existed at all. You'll document suffering you're not allowed to prevent. You'll make friends with people in other realities knowing you can never see them again. You'll lie to everyone in your life about what you do for work. And eventually, if you do this long enough, you'll develop RDS."
"What's RDS?"
"Reality Displacement Syndrome. Your brain trying to simultaneously exist in multiple timelines. Multiple realities. It's like PTSD but cosmic. We have treatment. Therapy. Mandatory psychological screening. But it still happens. People fracture. Some of them recover. Some of them don't."
Sarah processes this. "That's a hell of a pitch."
"I know. But you asked for honesty."
"Why would anyone take this job?"
Reyes looks at her. Really looks at her.
"Because once you know the multiverse exists, you can't unknow it. Because somebody has to do this work. Because for every nightmare reality, there's one where humanity got it right. Where we avoided the wars. Where we cured the diseases. Where we built something beautiful. And seeing that, seeing what we could be, that's worth the cost."
"Is it though?"
"Ask me in five years."
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STEP SIX: MAKE A CHOICE THAT WILL PROBABLY RUIN YOUR LIFE (IN INTERESTING WAYS)
Admiral Kane — tall, imposing, with eyes that suggest she's seen some things — sits across from Sarah in an office that's trying very hard to look official and mostly succeeding.
"Ms. Chen. You have two options. Option one: we administer a memory suppressant. You wake up in a Kaohsiung hotel with a headache and no recollection of the last twenty-four hours. You go back to your life. Your journalism career. Your normal, boring, singular reality."
"And option two?"
"Option two: you sign about forty NDAs, undergo psychological screening, complete six weeks of training, and join the Torii Foundation. We need people who can write. Document. Tell stories. The Locksmiths are great at data but terrible at narrative. We need someone who can make sense of what we're seeing out there."
"You want me to be a multiversal journalist."
"I want you to be a chronicler of infinite Earths. Slightly more poetic."
Sarah thinks about her apartment in Taipei. Her freelance gigs. Her student loans. Her life, which is fine. Perfectly fine. Boring, but fine.
She thinks about the probe footage. The Victorian airships. The infinite realities branching like a tree she can't unsee.
She thinks about the fact that she's always wondered if she made the right choices. If there's a version of her out there who's happier. Braver. Better.
And now she could actually find out.
"The coffee here is really terrible," she says.
"The worst," Kane agrees.
"And you're telling me I'll get traumatized, lied to, probably develop some kind of cosmic PTSD, and spend my life documenting worlds I can't save."
"That's the job."
"And the pay?"
"Competitive. Plus housing. Plus the knowledge that you're helping save the world by preventing multiversal collapse."
"Does that happen often? The collapse thing?"
"More often than we'd like."
Sarah laughs. She can't help it. This is insane. This whole situation is insane. She got drunk at a bachelorette party and accidentally stumbled into a secret organization that monitors alternate realities and now they're offering her a job like this is a normal Tuesday.
"Can I think about it?"
"You have ten minutes."
"That's not a lot of thinking time."
"The memory suppressant works best if administered within thirty-six hours of exposure. Clock's ticking."
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STEP SEVEN: WELCOME TO THE TORII FOUNDATION (YOUR LIFE IS WEIRD NOW)
Sarah signs the papers.
All forty of them.
Her hand cramps by page thirty-seven but she keeps going because apparently she's the kind of person who chooses cosmic trauma over a normal life.
"Congratulations," Reyes says, not unkindly. "You're now part of the Torii Foundation. You'll start training next week. Read these." She hands over a stack of binders that looks heavy enough to cause spinal damage. "Fissure mechanics. Nexus safety. Prime Directive ethics. Reality classification systems. Exciting stuff."
"Can't wait."
"One more thing." Reyes leans forward. "You're going to see versions of yourself. In other realities. It's inevitable. And you're going to want to make contact. To compare notes. To ask if they're happier."
"And I can't."
"You can't. Because the multiverse isn't about finding better versions of yourself. It's about understanding that every version is valid. Every choice mattered. Every reality is someone's home."
"That's very philosophical for such a secretive operation."
"We contain fissures, Ms. Chen. We don't contain meaning. That's all up to you."
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EPILOGUE: YOUR FIRST DAY IS TOMORROW (AND IT'S ALREADY WEIRD)
Sarah spends her first night in Site-7 quarters that smell like industrial cleaning products and possibility. She can't sleep. Her brain won't stop spinning.
Somewhere in the facility, a Gateframe is humming. Somewhere, a Expeditionary Team is prepping for tomorrow's mission. Somewhere, someone is monitoring a fissure that leads to a reality where dinosaurs never went extinct, or where humans never evolved, or where everything is exactly the same except one small detail changed everything.
Infinite Earths.
Infinite stories.
And she's going to document them.
She pulls out her phone. Starts to text her friend about the bachelorette party. Realizes she can't. Everything that happened is classified. She can't tell anyone about fissures or the Nexus or the fact that reality is plural.
She's probably going to have to lie to everyone she knows for the rest of her life. Or until she goes mad.
Cool. Cool cool cool.
She opens her laptop instead. Starts typing.
Report 001: Personal Log
Day 0 of Torii Foundation Employment
I accidentally discovered the multiverse while drunk. This is either the best or worst decision I've ever made. Time will tell. The coffee here is terrible. The people are surprisingly normal given the circumstances. I saw footage of a reality where the Roman Empire never fell and they have pizza delivery via drone.
Tomorrow I start training. Apparently there's a written exam on "Nexus Survival Basics" and a practical on "Not Freaking Out When Your Reflection Lags Behind You."
I'm not sure I'm qualified for this job. But then again, I'm not sure anyone is qualified to document infinite realities and maintain their sanity.
Note to self: Buy better coffee. The machine on Level 3 might be sentient and definitely holds grudges.
She saves the document. Closes the laptop. Lies in bed staring at the ceiling.
Tomorrow she'll learn about quantum foam and temporal echo and all the ways reality can break and how to not break with it.
Tomorrow she'll meet ET-1 and probably embarrass herself asking stupid questions.
Tomorrow she'll start learning how to navigate the space between worlds without losing herself in the process.
But tonight, she's just Sarah Chen. Journalist. New hire. Person who made a weird choice that might ruin her life in interesting ways.
She's okay with that.
Somewhere across the multiverse, another version of her chose the memory suppressant. Woke up in Kaohsiung with a headache and no knowledge of fissures or infinite Earths or the fact that reality is stranger and more beautiful and more terrifying than anyone imagines.
That Sarah is probably happier.
But this Sarah gets to see everything.
And honestly?
She wouldn't trade that for anything.
Even if the coffee is really, really terrible.
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[GUIDE ADDENDUM: THINGS THEY'LL TELL YOU IN TRAINING]
Fissure Classifications:
Class-1 (Micro): Windows. You can look but not touch.
Class-2 (Harmonic): Annoying. Disrupts electronics. Mostly harmless.
Class-3 (Macro): The big ones. Actual doorways. Currently only one stable: Meinong, Taiwan.
Class-4 (Mega): World-ending disasters. Pray you never see one.
Key Locations:
Site-7: Main base in Taiwan. Built around the Meinong Fissure. Only stable access point to the Nexus.
The Nexus: The space between realities. Time is weird. Physics is optional. Your reflection might wave first.
Important Tech:
Wayfinder: Keeps you anchored. Don't lose it. Seriously.
Gateframe: Makes fissures safe-ish to cross. Big metal ring. Very expensive. Don't break it.
Q-Comms: Quantum communicators. Work across realities. Fail during "reality weather."
Rosetta Nodes: Universal translator, works most of the time.
The Rules (That Everyone Breaks):
No contact with alternate selves
No technology transfer
No interference with local events
No emotional attachments
No telling civilians about the multiverse
The Reality:
You'll break at least three of these rules
You'll feel terrible about it
You'll do it again anyway
Welcome to the job
Survival Tips:
The coffee gets worse before it gets better
Trust your team
Don't trust your reflections
Keep a journal (encrypted)
Take the therapy sessions seriously
Remember: every reality is someone's home
Final Note:
If you're reading this, you already signed the papers. Too late to back out now.
Welcome to the Torii Foundation.
Your life is weird now.
Get used to it.
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END
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