Free Theatre of the Gods by M. Suddain Page A

arc before floating gently down on his life chute.’ No one had any reason to doubt his calculations, he was the second-best scientist in the universe. Dr Provius looked calm as he climbed into the cannon, he even smiled and waved to the crowd. He trustedhis star pupil. The cannon leaped and Provius disappeared over the trees, punched through the fluffy white clouds, touched the outer atmosphere, and kept going. History does not record the reaction of the former first-best physicist in the universe on being fired into space, only the reaction of the former second-best, now first-best, yet inconsolable. He tried to follow his master, but was restrained.
    *
    In just a few months Fabrigas had gone from galactic celebrity to cosmic outcast. He could not be tried for the murder of his master, since Provius had willingly climbed into the cannon, but everyone knew where the fault lay. His already crumbling reputation was ground to a fine dust. He was disgraced, stripped of his Academy position and his renown as one of the great minds in his Empire.
    Then, on the eve of his thirty-third birthday, M. Francisco Fabrigas made his most shocking declaration. To universal astonishment, he announced that he was leaving his universe to travel beyond the borders of reality. ‘I am undertaking a voyage to the next dimension, using an engine of my own design. I am an explorer, and I will prove the existence of other realities the only way I can: by travelling there and returning.’
    ‘And just who will be mad enough to accompany you on this expedition?’ said the scholars who meet in dingy cafes.
    ‘No one,’ said Fabrigas. ‘This will be a solo expedition.’
    Laughter. Cruel, cruel laughter.
    And so the former great explorer set off to chart the Infiniverse in his tiny saucer with its top-secret interdimensional engine. He left his Empire behind, travelled out into the furthest reaches. There, in the remotest corner of the universe, he experienced breathtaking solitude as he passed through regions of space so empty that there was not a breath of light. He had no crewmates to share an exclamation with as he came upon the remains of a galaxy-sized computationarray left behind by a civilisation forgotten by the ages. No one heard his screams as he fell into the furious winds of the Nebula Australis. The winds flung his craft like a discus to almost a third the speed of light. He was knocked unconscious by the gravitational forces. When he awoke, if his testimony is to be believed, he found that he had vanished from his universe, and appeared in a new one.
    It was a universe identical to the one he had come from. He was discovered by a team of oil prospectors who agreed to take him and his damaged saucer craft back to the Empire. As he travelled back, astonished, he found the same constellations, the same planetary systems. And when he arrived in the cities (which seemed, to the eye, utterly identical to the cities he had left), he found people identical to the ones he’d said goodbye to. These people claimed to have farewelled him on his voyage to the next universe just a few months before.
    Yes, I know what you are thinking. A lesser Omninaut (such as yourself) would have concluded, seeing these same places, these same bemused people, that he had in fact never left his universe. But M. Francisco Fabrigas was not a lesser Omninaut. He was a greater one, and this universe, he concluded, was clearly not his. Even when he returned to his old apartment and found it abandoned. Even when his keys fitted the door. Even when he found cards on the table from his few remaining acquaintances, wishing him well on his voyage to the next universe. That was the only difference he could detect in this universe: that he had already left it. ‘So my exact double set off at the same time as I did. How extraordinary!’ Those around him shook their heads in disbelief.
    He was disappointed not to meet himself. He wandered around his double’s apartment in