Reality Hopping
In this story you can hop between realities following these rules:
No more then
- 1 a Day
- 6 a Week
- 20 every 4 weeks
- 50 every 12 weeks
- 180 every 48 weeks
These measurements are based on your home reality.
Your home reality is the one where you start your journey from.
When you hop to another reality you switch your mind with anybody who is there already.
If you hop to a different reality then your home reality from another reality then:
Reality 3 contains you.
Reality 2 contains the person from reality 3
Your home reality contains the person from reality 2
If someone dies then the person whose reality he/she home reality changes to that of the person who died. (Using the example above , if the person in your home reality dies your home reality becomes reality 2. If the person in reality 2 dies then the home reality of the person from reality 2 becomes
3.)
Written by Catprog on 22 August 2004
Lazy day
A fly buzzes around your head, and you angrily swat at it, wondering how it got in the room. As your hand connects with it, satisfyingly flinging it against the wall, you hear a loud shriek from the other room, nearly making you fall off the couch.
"WHAT are you doing?!" You hear your sister yell as she storms into the room. As you wonder how she saw you from all the way in the kitchen, she stomps over to the little fly and cups in in her hands. You scoff as she walks over to the screen door and lets the little bug go free, then angrily turns to you. "You KNOW that could've been a jumper, you idiot. Why on Earth are you so careless!? What if you were in some other dimension and some big giant fly smacked you against a wall?!"
You sigh and roll your eyes, glaring at her. "That'll never happen because I don't ever plan to jump. There's too much risk involved. Who knows what I'll end up as? It's not like I get to choose."
Apparently you gave the wrong answer, indicated by a pillow being thrown in your direction. "But what if someone switches into YOU?"
You grumble and leave the couch, apparently not going to watch TV after all. Ever since the government made the 'Jump Start' known to people, life hadn't been the same. Although in practice for most, society had just found something else to argue the morality of.
The Jump Start was when the first person 'jumped' realities. Turns out the person he replaced was some governor in Wyoming. People noticed right away, and the guy was sent over to some secret base for testing. Luckily, despite everyone's worst fears, he wasn't some kind of supervillain or anything, and he came clean about jumping. Basically, people were able jump realities and switch bodies with another person, animal, or any living thing. A lot of people don't do it because of the risks involved, and some even went so far as to get 'mind-locked', a secret procedure used by the government to keep them from getting switched into. Only rich people could afford to be mind-locked though, so a lot of the population had to live in fear of suddenly being zapped out of their bodies without warning.
You walk to your room in a huff and slam the door, just sort of mad in general. At the situation, at your sister, everything. It's not like you stabbed someone. Just swatted a little fly.
Right as you're about to fall into your bed, you feel a strange pulling sensation all over your body. Like your soul is getting sucked through a vacuum cleaner. Before you can even scream for help, you feel yourself plopping in a chair and falling forward. Quickly trying to catch yourself, you slam your hand into a bar table, spattering a nearby group of people with booze and food. As your vision becomes cloudier, you see the faces start closing in around you. Whoever zapped you here better have had a damn good reason?
Written by Zorpix on 29 October 2014
Bar Fight
As the faces close in around you, you suddenly realize why someone might have wanted to switch out of here. Bastard. Maybe there's a way to talk yourself out of this.
"Hey! Hold up!" You yell, surprised you still have your old voice. The other guys seemed surprised too, as the stopped dead in their tracks. Good. At least you have their attention. "I'm not? whoever you?re looking for. He just switched realities with me. I just wanna get home, and then you can beat this guy to a pulp all you want."
The burly guys look at you like they still really want to hurt you, but somewhere in their drunkenly glazed eyes, you see a bit of understanding.
"One of our buds got switched a few weeks ago. Get lost, asshole."
Nodding curtly, you stand to dash out of the bar. However, your feet catch on each other and you feel your head start swimming. With a loud crash, you fall to the floor of the bar, invoking the laughter of just about everyone in the room. Apparently drunkenness doesn't transfer bodies. That bit stays. Giving a cheeky little wave to everyone else in the room, you pick yourself up and stumble out of the bar.
The place you've been taken looks fairly similar to your reality. Normal looking buildings and skyline. It looks like you're in some kind of city, with buildings stretching up high above your head. People line the city streets, but you can't make out any distant figures due to your drunken vision.
As someone bumps into you, you hear them call out "Watch it, scale face!" Scale face? What the heck was that supposed to mean? Looking down to your body for the first time since transporting, you realize what has happened. The body of the guy who switched with you was a lizard man! It wasn't your legs you tripped over in the bar, it was your tail!
As people bustle about you, you realize you have to get moving, else risk being run over. Looking left and right, you don?t see anything particularly helpful for getting back to your own life, so either way is going to just be a gamble.
There are some differences though. To the left, you see more city-like buildings, tall and bright. To the right, you see a more residential area that looks a bit quieter. You weight the options in your head. There might be places in the city that specialize in this kind of thing, but you?re not sure you want to risk wandering around in a big city you know nothing about. As for the residential area, there may be people who have had to deal with things like this before, and they may be more welcoming as well.
Your head starts swimming from your drunkenness and all the thoughts running around your head. Leaning back against the bar a bit, you wait until your vision clears before making your final decision.
Written by Zorpix on 29 October 2014
Grungy Furs
You decide your chances of finding someone helpful will be better in the city. More people, more opportunity, right? Still stumbling a bit, you realize it may not have been drunkenness that was causing you pain, but the weird feelings your stomach gave from the switch. After all, some people's hearts couldn't take it, and they died while switching. If you were drunk though, you'd still be feeling the effects. Your headache and dizziness were slipping away, though.
As you walk further in the city, you realize what really sets this city apart from your own. It's full of animal creatures! You couldn't really tell back in the bar due to your blurred vision, but now that you were in a busier area, it was impossible to mistake the foxes, skunks, dragons, and other creatures that surround you. Feeling a bit awkward in your new body, you pull your tail closer, still getting the hang of working the muscles. At least no one will think you look too out of place.
It's easy to get sidetracked by all the strange beings around you, but with some effort, you manage to retain your focus on finding someone to help. Back in your reality, there was only one way to return to your own world. People had developed a machine that dealt with some kind of space-time mumbo jumbo. Whatever it was, it brought people back into their own bodies, usually successfully. However, that was expensive as hell.
The crowd around you has thinned out a bit, and the lights of the city have grown a bit darker. The smell of garbage and wet fur reaches your nose, and you feel bile rising in your throat. The air is hotter, and the atmosphere has a certain grunge to it. It's painfully obvious that you've reached the bad part of town. You don't really see that many other people (or furs, or what have you), but there are shadows coming from alleys, and intermittent weird noises coming from a few different directions.
Dirty neon signs and shop names line the street on either side, grime so thick you can smell it from where you stand. Who could ever help you in this place? As you're starting lose hope along with your lunch, you feel like turning back any second. Suddenly, as if by magic, a large neon sign flickers to life that reads: "Stuck in Reality?". There's an arrow pointing down below it toward the building it's attached to. Running over to the place, you glance in the windows, hoping you find something useful.
Sadly, all the windows are blocked by large black shades, preventing any knowledge about the inside of this place. Is fixing reality jumping illegal here? Maybe it's some kind of occult magic? You press your ear to the door, trying to hear anything you can. Faint music is all your ears can pick up.
At any rate, you wonder if you should enter the store or just keep wandering around, preferably in a different direction.
Written by Zorpix on 22 December 2014
Quality control is going to love you
Pulling your head away from the door, you shake it in distrust. No. This place is too creepy. You’ll find some other way back.
Stepping away from the store and back onto the sidewalk, you decide to try crossing the street and walking toward a large factory that’s maybe a few blocks away. Smoke is emitting from the top of it and pouring out into the air. No wonder this place smells so muggy.
Heading toward it doesn’t take as long as you thought, and you’re there within a matter of minutes. Aside from a few shady glances and noises from alleyways and finding some spare change and a condom in your pocket, nothing terribly unusual happened on the walk.
The factory is closed to the public via large gates guarding the entryway. Looking at them, you can’t really tell how they’re locked in place. The hinges on them suggest they swing in and out, but there’s no poles, no electric mechanisms, not even a gatekeeper nearby. Pushing on the bars of the gate gets you nowhere, for even though they seem to just be hovering in midair from hinges attached to pillars, they’re immovable. However, you notice that there just might be enough room to crawl under it. Looking around to make sure no one is watching, you duck down and wriggle your way under the metal gate.
As you put your hands on the bottom of the gate to help push yourself through, the doors swing open with almost no effort, gliding gracefully out where you had just been standing. Rolling your eyes at the simplicity of the problem, you stand up and dust yourself off.
It looks like you’re now in the building’s parking lot, as there are dozens of cars parked around you. The only oddity is that none of them are in place. There isn’t even really a “place” for them to go. There are no lines on the ground or anything that designate where cars should drive or park. Shrugging and chalking it up to just a cultural oddity, you walk to the main doors of the factory.
The front door to the place is even bigger than the gates leading in. Whoever owned this place was definitely not short on money, and could maybe use some of it to help you get home. It looks like there’s a reception area that’s supposed to welcome you in the building, but it’s oddly deserted. There’s not a soul in the room, but the sounds of heavy machinery can be heard roaring from deeper in the building. Walking behind the counter and through another set of double doors, you find yourself on a catwalk in what appears to be the main room of the facility. Large vats of something are being pressed down by pistons, whose operation seems to be what’s causing all the smog. Walking above one of the vats, you suddenly realize how low the safety rails are here.
No sooner do you realize this than an alarm blares in your ears, echoing throughout the factory. A voice over a PA system screams “LUNCH IS OVER, BACK TO WORK!”
The jolting scare of the noise made you lose your balance. You try to lean on the rail for support, but you misjudge its distance, and you feel your body’s weight shifting. With a yelp, you lose your footing and fall into a vat, only to see a piston about to come crashing down on top of you.
Written by Zorpix on 20 February 2015
The end (for now)