Fictive Breach

by Kyle Tunis

        “What is the price of a fictional life? Fictional suffering? Is there any pain too deep to inflict on someone who does not exist? If the answer to that question is ‘yes’, then I may be the greatest criminal in the history of all realities…”

Jeff Hess (fictional author), in Alasdair Donald’s Wyrmaggedon (2004)

This is a work of fiction. Everything you read here, including these words, are the work of an author’s imagination. The great evil lurking at its core does not exist. You are safe, shielded by the rigid barrier that separates Reality from the world of make-believe. Hopefully that’s enough.

The idea of a Fictive Breach isn’t new. I first learned of it through the great films of David J. Turner, an unrivaled creative mind with a career spanning six decades. More importantly, Turner is entirely fictional, which puts another protective layer between us and the Fictive Breach. He wrote in his (fictional) autobiography:

Most creatives I know do not feel that they are creating a story; rather it is a discovery. I don’t write my movies, I discover them. They exist already, the “writing” process is really just uncovering the story piece by piece and then finally telling the world what I’ve found, which is often something I had never expected. Sometimes it upsets me. Sometimes it’s dangerous.

Many of my characters are artists or authors or other creatives, and I always strive to include this fact as part of their characters. In fact, World’s End’s main message was on this point. The main character (himself an author), narrates the opening sequence:

Every time I approach the typewriter, the words reveal themselves to me. I pull the strands of the story from the story itself. But this time, the story showed me something dangerous. Something I wish I had never seen. Something that may end up destroying the whole world, dramatic as that sounds. For the first time I don’t want to finish a story, though I fear this story will finish itself with or without me.

Something is rotten in this world I’m creating. I can’t name it or describe it, but I feel it lurking in the depths. I’m worried what my characters will find if they keep searching, but I can’t stop them. Their curiosity is too strong. They’ll never stop on their own. The best I can hope to do is to wrap the monster in layers of fiction, trapping it in worlds that don’t exist, putting entire realities between it and myself. I’ll craft stories and legends and myths to contain it; a fictional prison for a fictional threat.

This story begins at a cinema, the words

New from Alasdair Donald:

Wyrmaggedon

displayed poignantly on the marquee. Inside, the projector shows a man sitting in a dark, dingy apartment. The only light comes from the screen of the laptop, partially obscured by the man hunched over it, nervously biting his nails and taking sips straight from the bottle of whiskey next to him, at this point nearly empty. On his screen: Beyond the Universe by Jeff Hess. A finished novel, hundreds of pages long. All that’s left to do is to complete the foreword, a task the intrepid author has been dreading. He inhales deeply and begins to write:

What is the price of a fictional life? Fictional suffering? Is there any pain too deep to inflict on someone who does not exist? If the answer to that question is ‘yes’, then I may be the greatest criminal in the history of all realities...

Beyond the Universe was meant to be a standard work of science fiction, whimsical and entertaining. That’s not where the story took me. It came out darker and more terrifying than I could have imagined: a cosmic horror of unprecedented scale. In this world, the line blurs between fiction and reality. The protagonist, Erin Jopley, brings her play to the stage, safe in the knowledge that, while her characters are devoured by the great Wyrm, she herself sits safely protected in the real world. This, as you will soon see, is a great misconception. The Wyrm of her creation is too powerful. It begins to tear down the thin fabric separating its world from that of the playwright.

I sit here, shuddering as I write, wondering if I too am making the same fateful error? Why do I believe myself safe from this horror simply because it is fictional, when I just wrote an entire novel refuting that assumption?

The Wyrm is coming. I feel it in my bones. I haven’t even published yet and the world is already coming undone at the seams. Nothing too obvious yet, like when coins stop flipping as Tails in Jopley’s world, but the precursors seem self-evident: economies are crashing, more and more governments fall into political dysfunction, war and disease are on the rise. I fear that we shall soon see, as Jopley eventually does:

Outside, the stars looked different. With everything else going on in the world, the change had at first been too subtle. Save for astronomers, who no one was paying much attention to these days anyway, people were far too preoccupied to notice the change until it was obvious. Each changing star was different in its own way: some became much brighter, others flickered. A few seemed to have disappeared entirely. When it was Jopley’s turn to notice, her heart turned over. The bile rose in the back of her throat. She knew what was coming. She knew because she had written it herself, on the pages of her script:

HICKS: THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE! THE STARS HAVE LOOKED THE SAME SINCE CAVE PAINTING DAYS. HOW COULD THEY ALL HAVE CHANGED IN THE PAST WEEK?

KEVIN: WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME? YOU’RE THE ASTROPHYSICIST.

[HICKS MOVES TO THE WINDOW AND LOOKS UP, WISHING IT WERE NIGHTTIME SO SHE COULD SEE THE PHENOMENON FOR HERSELF]

HICKS: NOTHING EXPLAINS THIS. WE’RE OUTSIDE THE REALM OF PHYSICS NOW. YOU WRITE SCIENCE FICTION, YOUR THEORIES MIGHT HONESTLY BE BETTER THAN MINE.

[AS IF TO UNDERSCORE THAT POINT, AN EARTHQUAKE ROCKS THE STAGE]

KEVIN, BREATHING HEAVILY: DAMMIT, ANOTHER ONE! IT ALL HAS TO BE RELATED, IT STARTED AROUND THE SAME TIME. EVERYTHING HAS BEEN SHIT FOR YEARS.

HICKS, IGNORING HIS COMMENT AND STILL LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW: THIS REMINDS ME OF YOUR STORY, ACTUALLY. THE ONE WHERE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS THEMSELVES START TO BREAK DOWN.

KEVIN: YOU MEAN IT SHOULDN’T BE HERE? [LAUGHS] EASILY ONE OF MY WORST STORIES. ALL METAPHYISICAL NONSENSE.

HICKS: WELL IT WAS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE BORING SPACE LASER BATTLES.

KEVIN: AT LEAST THE SPACE LASER BATTLES SELL WELL. AND I LIKE TO THINK THAT MINE AREN’T THE BORING ONES.

HICKS: WELL THE MONSTER IN THAT WORLD -

KEVIN, INTERRUPTING: THERE WAS NO MONSTER IN THAT WORLD. IT DIDN’T EXIST. IT WAS JUST A MYTH.

HICKS, SPINNING FROM THE WINDOW: EXACTLY, A MYTH THAT ENDED UP CHANGING REALITY! YOU DON’T THINK —

KEVIN, INTERRUPTING AGAIN AND GETTING INCENSED: OF COURSE NOT! DON’T BE ABSURD, THAT’S JUST SCI-FI NONSENSE. A FICTIONAL MONSTER CAN’T BREAK INTO THE REAL WORLD! FICTIVE BREACH IS A NICE IDEA FOR A STORY, BUT IT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

HICKS, AFTER A MOMENT: ALL OF THE STARS CHANGING AT THE SAME TIME IS IMPOSSIBLE TOO.

[BOTH SILENT FOR A FEW MOMENTS]

HICKS, QUIETLY: HOW WELL DO YOU REMEMBER THE STORY?

KEVIN: PERFECTLY. I REMEMBER EVERY WORD I WRITE.

HICKS: IN YOUR WORLD, THE MONSTER CAME TO THE REAL WORLD FROM A FABLE.

KEVIN: YEAH. THE OMNIVERSE WYRM.

HICKS, SITTING DOWN ON THE FLOOR: I’D LIKE TO HEAR IT AGAIN, IF YOU DON’T MIND TELLING IT.

KEVIN, SITTING AFTER A MOMENT: SURE. WHY NOT.

The Omniverse Wyrm

        Long ago, an old, wizened philosopher sat in his home and attended to a visitor: a young man from a distant land. The young man had come hoping to learn philosophy from the old master. The young man explained: “I am unable to study philosophy in my homeland, as the king forbids all study of knowledge. He believes knowledge to be very dangerous.”

        The old philosopher chuckles. “Most likely, the true danger is the danger to your king should the common people gain knowledge.”

        “Exactly!” exclaimed the young man. “Knowledge itself is never dangerous!”

        The old philosopher frowned, stroked his long white beard, and thought for a moment. “That is not necessarily true. I agree that I have not found any knowledge which I would consider to be dangerous, but I also do not possess all knowledge! So it’s possible that some piece of knowledge that exists may indeed be dangerous, we just haven’t found it yet.”

        The young man grinned. “Oh how wise you are!” He knew that he would yet learn much from his new teacher.

        That night, the old philosopher struggled to sleep. His mind lingered on this new idea: a piece of knowledge that would be a danger to possess. He did not wish to think of it, since he reasoned that the more time he spent thinking about it, the more likely he would be to discover such a piece of knowledge. Nevertheless, his sharp and curious mind battled the problem unbidden.

        Finally, in the morning, he approached the young man. He said, “I have thought more about the problem of dangerous knowledge. I am now certain that such a thing exists.”

        “How can you be certain?”

        “Because I have discovered it. I may have caused great danger to me, to you, and to the whole world. To all worlds.”

        “How can that be?”

        “This knowledge is too dangerous to be left in this world. I intend to take my own life after this conversation, to rid the world of it.”

        The young man thought for a long moment. “Then I ask that you tell me anyway, even if I should have to die in the next moment.”

        The old man smiled sadly. “You would have made an excellent student. Very well.”

        The old man explained what he had discovered:

        “We philosophers often think about the universe, and what we mean by that is everything that exists. We might not know everything that exists, but we at least have the word “universe” to explain everything that is real. This leads to a circular definition where the universe is everything that is real, and reality is defined by what exists in the universe. The terms define each other. I then propose a new concept, more easily defined: the Omniverse. The Omniverse denotes everything that could conceivably exist. Everything possible. Everything hypothetical. Everything fictional. It is all part of the Omniverse. Fundamentally and by definition, there can only be a single omniverse and we must be a part of it.”

        “What a wonderful concept! I understand completely!” exclaimed the awed pupil. “But how is that knowledge dangerous?”

        “Because the universe and the Ominverse have a fundamental difference. That is, if something could exist in the Omniverse, then it can be said to definitely exist there. I have imagined a Wyrm, a voracious being of great power which can travel freely through the Ominverse, feeding on it and its inhabitants. It will devour the very laws of nature themselves. Because I have imagined that being, it can be said that it must exist within the Omniverse. If such a being is sufficiently powerful (and, because it could be, then it is), then this Wyrm can and must now come for us, to devour our tiny little universe floating in the ocean of all that could possibly exist. The Wyrm is fictional, but that will be no barrier for it. It will soon come for this world, and for every world that does or even could exist. Yes! It will consume even that which does not exist. It will do this. It must do this, for the simple reason that I have conceived of it.”

        Both men were silent for a long time, then each took his life in turn. They were smiling as they went, believing they had stopped the Wyrm.

        They were wrong.