Story: 'Triangles', III

(Part II , IV )

Some people say there's only one universe, and others that there are an infinite number, all subtly different. The truth is unknown, except for a handful of clues at the Junction, amidst the ancient mysteries and labyrinthine passages.

At the beginning of time, when the Other let the universes out of the pen for another trip around the block, he noticed a strange thing. Whereas before every universe had been utterly different and distinct, on this occasion there were... congruities.

In particular, there was this portion of space, a galactic sector in size that was remarkably similar in every case, except for a freakish change in the physics of geometry. In one reality there would be a predominance of squares, while in another circles, and in another dodecahedra. There were even mindboggling realities typed after shapes no-one could even imagine in three dimensions and those that resided in little pockets of one-dimensional space. Far out on the periphery the Other even spotted a complex dimension, half imaginary and half real, dragons spitting fire at technologists while dolphins laughed.

The Other liked dolphins. They always popped up somewhere every time the Release occurred. He also had suspicions about the dolphins... Beings that laughed and played all the time had to be up to something...

The Other found the congruities clustered most exactly around a small world, orbiting a little yellow star. It was the third planet. Looking in from the extra-dimensional void - wondering momentarily what might be looking in on it - little tunnels could be seen travelling from every little third world to its doppelgangers. Little fragments of sutured reality from one dimension to the next, built to last and very very worrying. In all the uncounted cycles this had never occurred. There was even a tunnel to the Junction. Annoyingly there were dolphins on most of the third worlds.

And then something even more worrying occurred. A tiny speck popped from one dimension to another. Something was beginning and worse, these tunnels weren't natural. The Other hadn't made them, so something else had.

The Other wasn't as alone as he had thought.

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NOTE Obviously a junction between realities is a very CS Lewis idea, and Douglas Adams did the dolphins.