- AL -

Abraham slowly opened his eyes, staring right at a rich wooden roof. He blinked several times, trying to reconnect with the world around him, the nervous sensations returning to his limbs. He felt like he just came out of a really deep sleep. When his senses returned, he realized he was lying back in a comfortable leather couch, big enough to accommodate his length. He rose to a seated position, and as he scanned the cozy room, his eyes fell upon a wooden desk, behind which Daniel was staring at him, with his usual impassible stance, straight in his chair. Abraham looked around him, but he was alone with Daniel; the room, although matching in style the luxurious offices of the Capitoline, was pretty much bare except the said leather couch, the wooden desk, and one library filling one side of the walls.

“Are you well, Mr. Solomon?” Daniel asked, his monotone voice brightened only by his perfect Britannian accent.

“Yes... I think,” Abraham answered, slightly confused as to recent events.

“My name is Daniel Fitzgerald; we have not yet met, but I am Miss Dawn’s assistant and bodyguard. We are alone,” Daniel stated. “Do you know why you are here, Mr. Solomon?”

“Not quite, no,” Abraham answered truthfully. Just what happened before his sleep?

“Yesterday, while under a stressful event, you exhibited without any doubt the signs of an M.U.T. Do you know what is an M.U.T., Mr. Solomon?”

“No...”

“It is a layman nickname, Mr. Solomon, meaning ‘Multi Universal Traveller’.”

Abraham rose his eyebrows at the term.

“What the heck is that?”

“Put into simpler terms, Mr. Solomon, a realm traveler. Your people call it dreaming.”

Abraham’s eyebrows rose even higher, more and more confused.

“Okay... So I’m being interrogated because I had a dream last night?”

Daniel studied him thoroughly before answering:

“You do not know of the M.U.T. ability, is it not true, Mr. Solomon?”

“No I don’t!”

“Very good. Then, we will have a greater success accessing your true memories, Mr. Solomon,” Daniel replied, leaning forward against his desk.

Abraham looked at him with even more confusion; tired of this joke, he rose to his feet.

“Okay, I’m going out of here. There is some things I seem to have left unfinished with...”

“You will sit down, Mr. Solomon,” Daniel retorted, in a calm yet direct voice.

Something mechanical seemed to ooze from Daniel’s authoritative stare, and Abraham thought it best to obey. He started to figure that Randall had something to do with this whole situation, and if that was the case, he didn’t wanted to hide anything. Remembering about Randall, Abraham had a sudden thought that something really bad happened for him to be under investigation. What could he have possibly done to anger Randall, the one person he felt most akin to? And what was that story about dreaming... and multi universal traveling? Was that a ruse to get him confused? He quickly thought that there was only one way to know: go through with it and prove his loyalty.

“Please tell me what I have done,” he replied more calmly to Daniel.

“I will, Mr. Solomon. Beware that you may recall some strange memories; do not be frightened by those, nor fight them. Let them come at their own pace, and deal with them calmly.”

“Okay...”

“This is what we know so far, Mr. Solomon. Your biological age indicates 37; your parents here are real, and they are able to recognize you when asked. You indeed went to college, for which all your professors, comrades, and bullies can testify...”

Abraham cringed at Daniel speaking so lightly of his bullying; but he mostly wondered how his upbringing could be so suspicious.

“...Your fellow workers at the QOEC from your 2029-2034 chaos theory teaching and advising position also testify that it was indeed you,” Daniel continued impassively, never once leaving his eyes from Abraham’s; the latter wondered how could the man stand so long without blinking. Without once looking at any note of any kind (his desk was bare of anything else but a closed computer), Daniel continued: “...and you exhibit the psychological profile expected of your position. All things considered, Mr. Solomon, you belong to our world.”

“All things considered?” Abraham wondered; what could Daniel possibly mean?

“What I will show you, Mr. Solomon, is the last existing copy of the footage at the Giovanni restaurant, last evening at 8:36 p.m. Once we are done visioning it, it will be destroyed forever, for your own protection.”

Daniel reached behind his right ear, and when his hand returned to the desk, he had a small portable disk drive between his fingers. Abraham raised an eyebrow: was that really the time for Daniel to make a cheesy magic trick? Daniel inserted the drive in a slot on the desk, and a 3 feet high holographic projection appeared.

Abraham watched as Randall walked in a furious manner and stormed toward two figures dancing on a familiar restaurant Gaeace, watching as if from the point of view of someone who held a camera.

“Get away from my daughter!!” Randall yelled, as Abraham recognized himself and Ysadora as the dancing figures; he watched with restrained anger as Randall roughly threw Ysadora on the floor, and turned on Abraham to punch him.

But then...

Abraham’s jaw dropped in utter shock as his other self on the footage literally vanished out of thin air, and reappeared a couple of feet away from Randall, staggering. It wasn’t all; Abraham watched, more and more hopelessly shocked as his other self vanished in and out under an orange-haired man’s grip, as Randall interrogated him.

When the holographic Abraham fainted after Ysadora shot him, Abraham was left dizzy. He barely realized that the cameraman’s point of view was Daniel’s, when the latter intervened in the footage.

A moment of silence greeted the end of the footage, Abraham staring blankly at the desk, his mind racing. He remembered the orange-haired man’s hateful words: “He’s an M.U.T.!! Just like the spies!” It didn’t bode well for him, yet he couldn’t even defend himself. Just what was he? How could he vanish out of thin air?

In a blur, he saw Daniel pick up the disk drive, and putting it back behind his ear.

“Mr. Solomon?” Daniel asked, almost in a calming fashion, after staring blankly at nothing for a few seconds, as if thinking.

“I... I can’t... explain... Fitzgerald, I...” Abraham mumbled, his mind numb.

“I see that you cannot; your facial and bodily expression are genuine in the expression of your shock and disbelief. It is a good thing, Mr. Solomon.”

“What...”

“I will quickly explain as simply as I can, Mr. Solomon. You are an M.U.T. A Multi Universal Traveler. The symptoms are quite affirmatives.”

“You said... dream...”

“Yes, Mr. Solomon. You must have heard of the Multiverse, Metaverse, Parallel Universe, or Bubble Universe theory. Few however are aware that it is not a mere theory; it is an actual fact of the Universe. Which brings to M.U.Ts. In most biological species of the Universe, what they consider dreaming is in fact a travel to another universe. In your terms, you may say another realm, or another dimension. However, another universe is a more accurate term.”

“My... my symptoms?” Abraham was trying to wrap his mind around what Daniel was saying. It was simply impossible…

“Vanishing is the most obvious one, Mr. Solomon. For a short moment, your link to this world is disrupted, and you, in all its terms, wake up to where you truly originate from.”

“Another universe?...”

“Yes, Mr. Solomon. Mr. Scott Johnson’s people are quite familiar with this process, and by extension, so are we. Few outside our group know of this however. That is why all copies of what happened has been erased. The vanishing is not the only side effect of M.U.T.; Mr. Redspear and Miss Dawn has informed me that your watch kept on showing a wrong hour. Is that true?”

“Yes...”

“What hour is it, Mr. Solomon?”

Abraham shakily looked at his watch: 13:23. He said so. Daniel asked him to look again, and this time, it gave him 1:38.

“It is 9:56, Mr. Solomon, as registered by all clocks, including my own, based on the atomic time.”

“My watch is malfunctioning since I got it,” Abraham replied, worried.

“Why do you still have it, Mr. Solomon, if it was malfunctioning?”

“It’s... well, it's my lucky watch. It got me through all the promotions to where I am now.”

“It may be so. In any case, your watch is malfunctioning, because your watch does not exist; for example, while you were unconscious, it disappeared from your wrist. Your mind made it up; and your mind cannot keep the time accurate. So your mind, to keep the logic of what should happen if you look at your watch, gives you a random number everytime you look at it.

» The third side-effect, Mr. Solomon, is the mystery of your ties. You had one in your coat pocket, and I took the liberty to put it around your neck to see the mystery myself. I calculated that in the last 36 minutes we have been talking, your tie has changed of colour 77 times.”

“What?!” Abraham looked quickly at his tie, that was now turquoise blue. “How...?!”

“Your suit is something that your mind can see constantly, and to keep your grasp on the reality, it makes sure that your suit remains the same everytime you look at it. But your tie is something you cannot constantly see. Thus, your mind lose its reference on what it should look like, and attributes it a random colour. Like the time on your watch, Mr. Solomon.”

Abraham’s mind reeled in confusion; this was getting too weird.

“Do you understand, Mr. Solomon?”

“No! No, I don’t!”

“Do not worry, Mr. Solomon. You will understand more after some time. Mr. Johnson’s people will perhaps explain it more in-depth to you. I myself do not have the entire grasp on an M.U.T.’s exact process; it is a unique trait of biological life.”

Abraham raised an eyebrow at that last sentence; that sounded more unusual than the whole M.U.T. thing.

“So what do you try to say? That I’m not real?” he asked, feeling a bit angry. Everything he did to get where he was, so finally make a difference in the world, to finally have someone to lo…

“Not at all, Mr. Solomon. You seem to have developed a bond with this world; your mind is strongly linked to your body, hence your physical grasp on reality. You think, so you are. However... your attires are not something your mind is most concerned with. And its link with this reality can be sometime be broken. Willingly, or unwillingly, as in your case.”

Abraham rose and paced nervously across Daniel’s bare office.

“I still don’t quite understand... And if I’m a... M.U.T., as you say, what does that change about me? How is it a bad thing, why am I interrogated because of that? Your... Scott, said that I was in league with the spies... Well I have no idea of what you’re talking about. I don’t know any spies, nor do I wish to know any...”

Firm hands on his shoulders stopped him, and Daniel turned him, his clear blue eyes staring in a strange yet kind manner into Abraham’s.

“This is why you are with me. I am helping you to understand, as much as helping my superiors have trust in you. Please, Mr. Solomon, calm down and take a deep breath.”

Daniel led him back gently unto the sofa, and this time, he dragged the chair behind his deck to put it near Abraham.

“How can I help if I don’t know what is happening to me?” Abraham asked, worried.

“Have you heard of regression, Mr. Solomon?” Daniel softly asked.