FINAL WEEK
Starting Saturday, the layer of clouds in the sky is more solid than ever. Overcast, reflecting the neon light of the city. By Sunday, you'll see more colors than ever, as several new areas are added to the span of your probation. And some areas aren't, but might see an approach anyway. Do the pods containing six weeks of treatment daunt you in the slightest now that judgment awaits at the end of the fourth week? Though faithful treatment participants only experience flashes on the upper third of their bodies now, their counterparts will experience occasional waves of isolating existential coldness. Does your physically present overseer have anything to say for herself? Just remember one thing: Kanto is watching and waiting.
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You find yourself in a bedroom. There's a bed, a closet full of among other things white coats, a bathroom off to the side with a shower chair. A desk with a microwave-minifridge and a little manga. Something like Inuyashiki in a gritty style with old characters.
And a diary.
Read?]
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No he wasn't. He's immediately flipping it open.]
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And then I was nowhere.
Well, that was my attempt to make sense of the void I found myself in at the time. It turns out I was actively not existing anywhere, which is much worse. D-minus, would not recommend.
Let me back up. You're reading the research notes of Dr. Olivia Octavius, creator of the Fisk Foundation Super-Collider and one third of the illustrious World Stealers. If you've lasted fifteen seconds without us trying to kill you (or worse), congratulations.
These papers won't tell you much of anything about why or even who. Kanto is pretty secretive. But I want a record of how. If something goes wrong and I lose my memories (or worse), there might be no other way back. Some of us found that out the hard way.
So there I was in Kanto the next thing I knew, with R and U. Found out we had a lot in common. With a little explanation and a lot of encouragement, R was able to chart a path out. Fortunately my tentacles covered the ground fast enough. That's how it's been ever since: Stronger together than apart.
U called up some drone planes to bring us into Kansai. Finally we could sit back and start to analyze just what the hell happened. Maybe get a good meal first. Coffee does NOT count, R. He was lucky that a single glitch didn't turn into a gust of wind and blow him away.
I asked R if his were on the inside or something. He had no idea what I was talking about. Eventually I would take samples from him, since it wasn't like there was anyone else U and I trusted. Apparently glitches are basically just a Spider-Verse thing! Who knew! Lucky Liv.
I tried to look on the bright side. He had lots of material to model from me. And without the cross-reference of cell decay, cell duplication might have taken even longer to jury-rig. I'm used to pain. Getting hit by a truck wasn't even the worst part of that first day.
The Fisk Foundation Super-Collider was commissioned by Wilson Fisk to bring around an alternate version of his late wife and son. I had been working on particle acceleration multiverse theory for years. The only problem is that anything larger than a speck of dust tends to decay within the week and/or show up with a big explosion.
Now these issues are surmountable, maybe even favorable. What's the cure to cancer if not cell deterioration? What's a nuclear reactor if not a controlled blast? And besides, what's the point of life in a universe where there's an alternate universe you've never seen? But does anyone want to share their toys and take on the risks of the intermediate stages, noooooooo.
Fortunately, Fisk had none of those problems: He had money, and he wanted his family back, NOW. The glimpses we were able to provide him on our monitors were enough to keep development going fast. Maybe too fast. Some goody two-shoes came out of the collider. All of them had some kind of spider gimmick like this pest I knew called Spider-Man. Hence, Spider-Verse. These guys only knew the collider as the thing that would turn the city into a black hole. Didn't stop them from making a whole production about going home themselves first before shutting it down. I wanted to see the project through to the end, so I fought them until the portal got me.
R is pretty concerned about what he was doing with this video broadcast thing before he got here. His original intention was to get rid of negative emotions, but that might have meant removing entire human spirits. In other words, their minds actively not existing anywhere. Like me. If he created an entire nonexistent cognitive world (a fictional one?), that would explain how I ended up there and in turn how the whole apparatus connected to Kanto so easily.
He shouldn't worry. We need to get back there first.
The thing is, we haven't actually discovered point-to-point jumps. The universe just switches for the scanned object on a subatomic level. We either bring stuff here, or jump out into an unknown void. But it's got to be a matter of time. I've set up a way for Kanto to summon stuff from this universe to itself, at least. It's a start.
And it's important. Someone's been nosing around and finally made it all the way to Kanto. U says the person is permanently taken care of. The items they acquired in their quest for "truth" or "atonement" or whatever? Not so much. According to my analysis, they're integrated into Kanto now and will show up at some point, a little like some of the stuff on the black market. I'm not interested in reaching for reversing that. If picking and choosing the convenient parts of Kanto were that easy, I'd have a lot less work to do.
The coffee cup method is finally a success. There's a suspended spiral of atoms that we can attach to any soul, and bam, there you have it, real-time quantum calculations. Of course, you don't just throw it at someone's head like a flower crown hoping it'll land. We're going to edit it in at the moment Kanto scans them, the same way we edit all the other augmentations.
I've given U everything she wants. Now it's time to play my part in her game, and then, finally, the power of the multiverse will be mine.
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He'll keep it for reference, leaving a batarang in it's place as a calling card. Is there anything else of note in this place?]