"This," Henri said, "Is the UNA's alternate home Alt. Interestingly enough, the original home Alt had the same effects on a woman's body."
"So, that doesn't explain it." Jim said. "What have we gotten ourselves into? I'd really appreciate it if you told me, because I am so confused."
"I'm afraid that you were unfortunately caught up in an operation gone wrong." Henri said. "We've been unable to locate all of our Jims, and we needed to see if you were one of them."
"What do you mean?" Sharon asked.
"This is what remains of the UNA. Technically, there isn't even a UNA anymore, because the grid is fractured."
"I've heard that before." Jim said. "But what grid? How is it fractured?"
"There are, theoretically, an infinite number of Alts. Alts are alternate realities, but the name actually means Another Lame Timeline. However, even though there are an unlimited number of them, not all could be reached." Henri said. "But somehow, the number we can reach has been reduced to only a dozen."
"What does that have to do with us?" Jim asked.
"Do you no what ChangeCorp. was planning?"
Jim and Sharon said no.
"They were trying to actually create new Alts. They were trying to create hundreds of them, each with the same population, and invade the remaining reachable original Alts."
"You still haven't answered out questions. How are we involved?" Sharon asked.
"Long ago, there was another wedding between the two of you. There have presumably been an infinite number of them, but this one was different. An amazingly inventive idea was used. A grid was placed into existence, effectively linking all the Alts we had access to together. The grid was to be used for two purposes: To make travel easier, and to synch Jim."
"What the hell is synching?" Jim asked.
"All the various versions of you had their minds copied and downloaded into a specific Jim. That's when it happened. The grid became fractured, and ever since, after seemingly random lengths of time, the Alts most similar to the Alt in which the wedding took place have disappeared."
"So ChangeCorp. was using us to collapse more Alts?"
"No." Henri concluded. "They wanted to get their hands on Karen, who also intruded upon the last wedding. They were going to use her to further explore the physics of Alts, so that they could create their own Alts."
Wed Apr 07 21:33:01 2004
Linking Enabled