It starts as all things should…

At the beginning.

A dark sky, dotted with stars.

Lines appear, joining the stars to form a
phrase…

Cured

An Aquarion Production.

They say.

They fade away, and the camera pans down
as the story begins…

Chapter the First

Flames.

That’s what the reddish tinge was,
Flames.

They were getting quite high now, licking
the branches of the trees like they were looking for a night to
remember.

Normally there would be fire-engines or
something, except in the forests of a land where Magic was prized
over science any day of the week (except possibly Thursday)
Fire-engines were not so much late as “I suppose it might have
been a good idea to invent them” type thing.

Plus this was a forest. An old, dry
forest. Even if there had been a local fire station, the chances of
any of the forest being recoverable were slim.

Watching the fire were two men. The first
was the leader of the village. The second was a man who we will come
to shortly. Suffice to say at this point that he is the instigator of
this conflagration, which is to say that he started the fire. In
fact, stuff shortly, let us look at him right now.

When this person looks into his bedroom
mirror at night, which he does every night, it is obvious that he
sees a God of Men. Tall, Sleekly muscled, with the hair that would go
on TV declaiming that they were “worth it”. The problem was
that to the rest of the world he wasn’t. Admittedly he was tall,
but his hair did not look cut so much as mown. And as for “sleekly
muscled”, it would apply only if you could also pin that label
on Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

At this point the writer could leave it,
point at him and laugh and call him Mr Stereotype. This is s type of
person who doesn’t really need a name. And even if he had one
you would instantly forget it. But, for narrative simplicity we shall
give him a name. We shall call him Roger.

“I didn’t mean for this to
happen” said Roger, unnecessarily, “I was only…”

“I’d save the excuses son.”
Said the Leader who, for the record, was not Rogers father. Nor
wanted to be.

“What do you mean?” Ask the
bespectacled one (did we mention the glasses? No? He wears glasses.)

The Leader said nothing, but pointed at a
button. The button was blue, and behind a slim pane of glass. Which
someone, in defiance of all probability, had set into a tree and
written upon it some words. Those words were:

In case of emergency, break glass.

“I think,” said the Leader,
looking at the ashen remains of the village, “this counts.”
He broke the glass.

There was a blue flash.

A couple of seconds a blue shimmering area
appeared and a man stepped of it.

“Who the Hell are you?” asked
Roger.

“My name is Sapphire Kael Da Blue”
Said Sapphire Kael Da Blue “But call me Sapphire, And I am one
of the 7 most powerful Magicians in this dimension”

“And what have you got to do with
this village?”

“Easy” Said Sapphire with a hard
edge that hadn’t been there before “I was born here.”

“Oh” Said Roger.

“Bugger” He added.

“So” Said the tall Magician in
the blue robe “How exactly did you burn down my village?”

Roger paused. There were two options here.
One, he could attempt to fob Sapphire off with a lie or Two, he could
tell the truth.

Of the 7 members of the Rainbow, who
comprised the 7 most powerful magicians in the world, Roger happened
to know that Blue and Green had cornered the mind reading side of
things. That was Sapphire and his girlfriend Emerald. Lying was not,
then, a good idea.

"What is Magic?" asked the
man in the blue robe at the front of the hall. A student, feeling
lucky, tentatively raised a hand: "Yes?"

"Something not possible under
normal circumstances?"

"No. Trick question, There is no
such thing as magic."

The general reaction to this by the
hall full of people selected to receive training in Magical Arts was
one of disbelief. Noting this, Sapphire continued:

"Let me demonstrate" he said.

Then he stuck his tongue out at the
audience.

The reaction to this was as was
to be accepted, Old Saff had finally gone loopy and right round the
twist. once the sniggering had died down Sapphire continued,
perfectly audibly and normally, yet with his tongue sticking out.

"Everybody in this room stick your
tongue out."

280 tongues emerged from 280 students.

"Now, roll it into a tube"
said the man in front

140 tongues rolled into tubes.

Another 140 made ‘I can’t do it’
noises.

"Correct" explained Sapphire,
"and that’s what I mean. To half of you, that trick is simply
that, a trick, But to the others it is an impossibility, your tongues
simply don’t do that. Magic is an ability to do something that others
can’t.

There has to be a concept of zero.

It is speculated that the multiverse was created in order it kill itself.

There are 3 forces in the multiverse, Which we shall call Empirical, Natural and Magical, and some say that the purpose of the multiverse is to find out which one will win. Like a multi-dimensional coin someone has tossed to see which side lands face up.

But in order for one power to win, there has to be a concept of zero.
There is, It’s called Neutral.

The theory of parallel universes runs thusly, Whenever there is a possibility for decision the universe diverges into 2. So there are always 2 universes of vital importance, the first is Universe 1 which was made first and which is pre-programmed to reject any kind of interference from another dimension.

The second is the place where the action happens, the face that will be viewed when the coin falls. You could imagine it as the centre point in a three-way tug-of-war, If the rest of the universe is controlled by one force and it controls enough to pull the rest of it over the line, that force wins. But there is a tug of war on the centre point, which affects how far the force has to pull to win. The centre point has to stay neutral.

So there was a fourth force, that of Neutrality, desperately trying to stop any of the forces from going too far.

The problem is that the force of neutrality was running backwards and forwards, trying to keep the multiverse in line, when the other three forces set a trap. The trap confined Neutrality’s field of influence to the centre point, and worse, bound it to that universe, not even being able to see the state of the multiverse.

The Neutrality sat on the planet, and decided that the best way to influence a planet was from the inside, and so poured it’s power into a human body during conception. After a nine month holiday he emerged in human form, not realising that the teaching changes the mind, and all the morals and ethics that as a force he was above were now something he himself were affected by.

A couple of hundred years past, and he infiltrated every power. Every plot hatched he both helped and hindered, he was an unknown thorn in the sides of each of the six agents, before the worst possible thing happened. The force for neutrality did the one thing he shouldn’t, yet had no control over. He fell in love.
Then, one fateful day, he was forced to make a choice. He knew his decision in advance, there was only one way to keep it neutral, but that would mean the death of his love. He was going to have to choose.

He chose.

He found he couldn’t live with the choice he made, and that he was far too involved, Then he found a way out of his trap, a portal that would take him to another universe, where he could regroup and recover for a century or two. He passed though the portal.

And that was the last time he trod on
the soil of Universe 2.

universe.html,
by NA. 11/25/00

Again, abandoned. This time due to far too much “Ooh, look it’s $foo from $thisPlace stuff.

There is something depressing about a
white, clear computer screen. The single, solitary line blinking at
you from the top left hand side of it, like some evil blinking eye of
Satan.
Or something.
>Hello
He typed.
He looked carefully at the word. Was
this the correct way to start a Shareholders meeting? Probably not
>
He pressed the Windows and R keys.
Open: >
He considered.
>Sol.exe
He pressed enter. The familiar green
screen launched itself, and 9 piles of cards arranged themselves
on-screen. Solitaire, the last refuge from Writers block.
He clicked aimlessly for a while,
before realising that every card was Black.
In disgust, he shut down Solitaire, and
decided to check his e-mails.
Downloading
messages… Done.

8 New messages, displaying:
From / Subject,
NTK/ C’est Need To Know
Xxx@hotmale.com / Free XXX Movies!!!
Kay@Merlintech.com / SHTK Stuff
Zoom Media / Dear Valued Customer…
Jason@spamicide.fooserve.com / Make Big $$$
Xnedra@Aloria.com (Ce’) / Re: Kale’s Army
James.Farly@Solicitor.co.uk / Natalie Warder
Mailinglists@SPS.org [SPS] / HTML 5 Standard Broken?

He read NTK whilst online, and wondered
how they found this stuff each week, filed the second and fourth
messages in the recycle bin, and put the last into the “later”
box, for when he had time. This only left Kay’s message, Ce’s message
and this Farly person. Farly seemed to know how to use e-mail, The
message was marked Urgent, so Simon opened that. He read the message.

by NA. 11/25/00