Since the wave’s attenuation was negative, an impossibility, the shockwave grew in power as it spread away from Sophie deep into the Underworlds.

Sophie's two passengers felt space around them strain. As the energy spread, it distorted nothing short of space-time. The Rho waves, in color, shape and effect amplified as they grew distant. Like neutrinos, the energy did not appear to damage the physical reality, just caressed it. The shock was not physical; it worked on a much more subtle and deeper level. Marilyn and Liam were humbled by the very nature of what they had just witnessed and felt. How dare Marilyn use the Attractor's waves to grab the Dot? Maybe her actions had unintended consequences, but like any good narcissist, she'd quickly dispelled her doubts. But Marilyn felt at the moment vastly inferior and extremely foolish, for perhaps the first time in her short life.

Sophie opened her tear-filled eyes.

She knew the Multiverse was here, in her heart she felt it.

"Show me what I need to see." The girl repeated.

Liam and Marilyn were silenced, but this time because they felt the power of the young girl. A human was talking to a force well beyond comprehension. At this time, in this place, Sophie was somehow relevant to the Multiverse. Liam wondered if this girl alone could have found her way here or if the waves were changing Sophie into a different living entity. This human, only twelve but had learned to control her gift and ignoring all care and caution, was now talking to the Multiverse herself.

Around them, space softened.

-- It -- answered.

— She answered. —

There were, of course, no words, no images. None would suffice. The Multiverse's arrival made Liam's welcoming bell tones on the Nexus, or Marilyn's video montages childish noise. Sophie slid a key into the fabric between all worlds, in a place where space itself meant nothing. No science could explain this. No technology ever conceived by any world came even close to what was happening. Liam also knew none of the previous Attractors had mastered their power, much less spoken to the Multiverse.

Sophie was...

Sophie was a natural; she was different, unique.

There was no time for hope, the. echoes of space replied.

Sophie's mind, intertwined with her illustrious guests, was propelled to a higher level of consciousness as inversely as Marilyn had just been humanized. They were connected to parts of life itself like a mother giving birth. The trio no longer had only four senses, they had ten. They were a blind man given the gift of sight. Their brains were at first unable to process most of the information now available to them. Their minds, overloaded with a flow of incomprehensible information, struggled to achieve equilibrium. The poor girl’s stance for a moment changed, she fell to. The power, arms and head back.

There were new colors and shapes but more importantly, new feelings. It was clear many of the new senses were linked with what humans like to describe generally as emotions. In the vastness of space and the unlimited power of the Multiverse, it felt strange to completely reprocess something as simple as a feeling born from within.

To humans, a limited number of emotions could occupy a mind at the same time. To the Multiverse, above time and space was energy, and high in the priority of these powers were emotions, millions of them. The world around them lost the feeling of materiality and became a large pool of feelings floating through the vastness of life.

Like a spider weaving a web, the Multiverse connected emotions of all types. Sophie saw her father appear in the distance. She knew it was him, though his body was whole. He was wearing a long white robe. Next to him appeared her mother holding the unborn child she was unable to bear. They were visions. The Multiverse wanted Sophie to see this. There were no words. Words could only serve to mask the message the Multiverse was trying to give.

Around them were the images of the accident she had just imagined, but instead of the pain and hurt were floating positive emotions of all type. Sophie, her father, and her mother appeared at the tip of a large triangle. Between them, energy in the form of lightening jumped back and forth. The blue lightning was pure and felt good. Sophie was puzzled by what she was shown; was this how the multiverse showed love? She'd expected something different.

Then these images vanished, and the silent darkness returned. The first message had been given. Somehow her family was at the center of this situation. There was much more the Multiverse needed to share. To aid their understanding, music began to play. It touched them, and the visitors began to resonate from within. The same way Marilyn used music as an integral part of her game, so did the Multiverse. At first, it picked a flawless but straightforward piece of flute. It was a gentle bird bouncing from one flower to the next. Then it gained in complexity as hundreds of unknown instruments gently wove themselves into the mix to create the most suiting symphony.

They were about to travel to places no creature had ever seen.

The group now felt like it was moving in space. After a moment's consideration, they realized spaced moved around them. Reality vaporized only to be replaced by clouds of lights and thunder. They escaped the Cold and punched out of the worlds into invisible curtains. Liam and Sophie recognized the feeling. They'd once felt these curtains as they traveled between the Lowest and the Purple.

The girl felt Liam's exhilaration and Marilyn's terror. They were moving between the worlds, and the artificial intelligence was distancing herself from her reality and body. As they moved out, they began to grow in size. There was no way to see themselves become larger than galaxies back on Earth, but deep inside, they felt it. They grew and grew until the darkness returned.

They were now larger than entire worlds. The music kept pace with their new form. Then the darkness vanished again. To the oldest creature in the Multiverse and to Marilyn, this show of power was humbling. They were specks in an ocean. To Sophie, this felt natural. She was unimpressed by the magnitude of the story playing around her, but paying attention nonetheless.

The group flew quickly to their next destination and after a minute of flashing colors, the vortex of light finally settled. With the help of the Multiverse, thick walls of color began to parse.

Arriving on top of a Celestial Mount Everest overlooking a valley of shining colors. In the heart of a valley, billions of light years below them, existed a structure. This was a sea of headless serpents crawling like maggots over a corpse. The long worms were made of light, and looked like rice noodles cooking in a light broth. Sophie did not understand what she was seeing and hoped her companions did. They were here as translators.

In this ocean of energy, nothing made sense. "These are the worlds forming the Multiverse," offered Liam, "I recognize their ballet. That is how they move; we know that. Most people think the different pieces in the Multiverse are like flat layers on a cake. We map them like these structures, as strains. Normally their movement is languid. A simple bend takes a million of your years." The dance of the creatures was at first somewhat random. The tubes slid and bent in a ballet, guided by some invisible music. Like the breaking of waves in the ocean to a veteran ship captain, the ballet began to take shape in Sophie's eyes. She began to feel something different.

"Which one is our world, the one you call the Cold?" asked the young girl. Liam knew the answer, he replied.

"The longest one. It wraps all others."

In the corner of her eye, she saw a spark of blue, the same color as the Metil inversion. It resonated in her the same way the Metil's rock inversion had. Slowly, some tubes began to fade, revealing what appeared to be one endless world wrapping around most others. Then the lengthy tube, the Cold, began to change color. Earth's entire dimension turned red and in some parts brighter red. "I see it," the girl answered.

"You do?" questioned the artificial intelligence who apparently did not see the color. The Multiverse wanted Sophie alone to see what was next. The tube, as it colored like a vein filled with cholesterol, stiffened. In turn, it's wavy movement around the other worlds slowed like an umbilical cord strangling the neck of a newborn.

"The Multiverse can't sever our world," whispered the girl. "Unless we fix it, the Multiverse as a whole will end." Liam stayed silent as the words sank in. "Liam?"

"Yes, Attractor."

"Call me Sophie please, specially here."

"Yes, Sophie."

"This is different."

"What do you mean?"

"Could the Multiverse transform itself? Like a butterfly."

Liam was humbled. He was talking universal metaphysics with this girl. In his world, he alone knew of these concepts. He thought long and hard about the best answer to give Sophie. The girl was no fool; she would cut to the essential, so he simply answered, "Yes. The physical constants could converge. They never have, why would they?"

Sophie and Liam felt a deceptive intent arise deep within Marilyn. The digital creature was hiding something. Before they would speak, the trio resumed its travel. They plunged closer in the direction of the red-colored worm, Sophie and Marilyn's world. They braced for the impact, but like a plane enters a cloud, they quickly crossed into the tube. The moment they touched the outer skin, their view changed. They now stood inside of a large library. Here there was no ceiling, no floor. Only endless stacks of books.

As if they came alive, each book slipped out of its shelf, as if opened by magic. Pages ripped from the books and exploded violently. The stacks of paper spread apart like serpents and images instead of word-filled paper. Each page was animated, like a small computer display and not simply paper.

Like the worms of the previous vision, attached by invisible strings, the stacks of cards floated in a carefully orchestrated ballet. There was a very precise order which must not be disturbed. To Sophie, the images within a book were related in an essential way. The stacks reminded her of some old silent movies created by flipping stacks of cards quickly under a light, or a flipbook made by a child to create a rudimentary cartoon. Here, video images were flipped in succession creating something else: a dynamic movie.

Pages began to fly out of sequence. They flipped and moved with no discernible sense, like butterflies in a courtyard. Some images flew closer. As the pages floated, she could see images appeared on both sides of the paper, but both sides of the page showed completely different scenes. They were images of her world, of Earth. On them was nothing she could recognize.

"Liam, what is this?" asked the girl.

"In my world, in the Lowest, we call this a Clutch. There are dimensional clutches and temporal clutches." The two-sided papers with a different image on each side continued to dance around the room. Liam knew he needed to explain more simply to the girl. "A map is nothing more than the two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional thing. So the map, an object of fewer dimensions is used to represent something of a higher dimension. We call this a clutch because it's imperfect. It helps the reader, but we want to keep in mind how the map is just a map. In that example, since the map reduces the space, we call this a dimensional clutch." Around them, the images were vibrating. "The same way, an image is an instant representation of something ongoing. A video recorded by a machine is only a series of flat images. We call making a video a temporal clutch."

"So what is this, a clutch?"

"I think this is both a temporal and dimensional clutch, but in a very elaborate form."

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Marilyn spoke. "He is wrong Sophie; this is not what he calls a clutch."

"Then what is it?" asked Sophie.

"No living creature has ever seen this, including myself." Corrected Liam.

"What is it?" Repeated Sophie to the digital creature.

"I will explain with a single condition. You must promise to bring me home once the Multiverse has finished giving us this information. I do not want to be stranded."

"Of course." Her answer reassured Marilyn.

"Focus on a single card," began Marilyn. "Look at only one image randomly." As she did, the book opened, and as if she had picked a card in a magician's deck, the sheet slipped partially out of the stack. It stabilized in the air in front of her. At first, the paper, like a fly trapped in an invisible spider web, was wiggling. Then it calmed down. The page began to flip from its front to its back every second each time with a succession of different images. The paper was alive and appeared nervous.

On one side was a ship about to hit an iceberg on the Barren Sea. The page flipped. On the other was a captain ready to move the ship. The paper flipped back to the iceberg. Then back to the front page where this time a different captain at the helm of the ship. The card flipped around to the past. This time Sophie saw was a lottery ball on a television channel. Then it flipped again, and again faster than Sophie could read. Each time the images were different.

"I don't get it." Sophie finally said.

"Your brain sees time in a linear fashion. The past is gone, and the future has yet to happen. Unlike you, those pages are how the Multiverse operates. To it, every part of time happens at the same time. The past, the future, they are all connected. On each side of these pages are linked events. I would say one is the cause; the other is the consequence if we must believe any portion of Liam's silly theory."

"What does it mean?"

"Imagine your life worked this way. Imagine if you could play with these tiles and subtly change how things work in your life to get to the best outcome you can conceive of; the one where Laurent sees your grandchildren. The one where you are the happiest."

"Then why not do that?"

"As you can imagine, for a specific outcome to occur would require more manipulation and thus more pages. Each page here is a causal request, a change or a deviation from the normal timeline."

"How do you know this?" asked Liam.

"This is not the time," interrupted Sophie. "I need to know."

"Thank you, dear. The Multiverse tries to deviate life from its true road as little as possible. Once it sets up the desired consequence, then it bends around itself locally. Remember that Pi variant I uncovered? That's the Multiverse's bend. The God Bias once did not exist on Earth. Back a century ago, the bias was zero. The Multiverse did not involve itself. Then, slowly the Bias increased."

"When did it begin?"

"Hopkins uncovered the bias in 2046, so yes well before your birth my young friend."

"Is that it?"

"No," answered the computer, "the moment I say something else, I think we will move from this place."

Liam bit his tongue to remain silent.

"What is it?"

"Look around and think of a known public figure." The girl did. Hundreds of sheets floated. On one side was an of image of Lo, her favorite singer. On one he was driving a car, on the other, he fell from the stage.

"You met Lo, right?" asked Marilyn.

"Yes, on the Colbert show. What a fool I made of myself."

"Think of that event." Nothing happened. "Think of any event where you were not there. The writing of Alice in Wonderland." She did, and the sheet floated to her. "Try thinking again of any event where you were there." She did, and nothing happened. She could see herself. To the Multiverse, Sophie did not exist.

"What," before she could finish the words, as predicted by the computer, the trio was swept away one more time.

They were back in the valley looking at the sea of light worms, but over the worms were millions of the library books. The reddish colored worm, the one supposed to be the Cold, was covered at some bends with the paper. As the red infection appeared on one part of the worm, the books like white blood cells converged. Then the infection passed.

"What do you see?" asked Liam.

The girl kept her vision to herself. Then there it was. On one tip of the red worm, the pages all swarmed. But this time, the infection jumped on the pages and counter-infected what normally should have cured the problem. The red color turned deep red, then purple and black. "The pages are dying; the world is dying."

"I know," answered Marilyn.

"What should I do? What does all of this mean?" She looked around. Down in the valley, the worms were dying; lights were growing dim. She was seeing the end of time.

"Marilyn, Liam, what is going on?"

"Sophie, can I ask a favor, do you trust me?" Liam asked, solemnly.

"Of course."

"Can you, for a moment, contemplate leaving Marilyn here?"

As he finished his words, there was a murmur of light down in the valley. As if Liam was given the Multiverse hope.

"Are you hurting the Multiverse?" asked the girl. The question created more light and seemed to reverse the flow. "Does it want me to leave you here?" In the blink of an eye, they had their answer.

Sophie opened her eyes. She was back in the Electoral Complex. Smiling down on her was Milly the journalist and two of her cameras. She was dangling the white plush toy. "Welcome back." The room was darker than usual, but there was air to breathe.

"Liam, are you there?" she said out loud. Within her, his voice answered.

"Yes."

Life was popping back on each screen; light was returning to the televisions in the room. On them was the smiling face of Marilyn.

"You're back!" exclaimed George.

"Yes, my dear father, I am. Yes, I am. That was a close one. The game goes on!" Exclaimed Marilyn loudly over every speaker in the Center. "The game goes on!"