Ether lived in a liminal space. Though her childhood had been Earth-typical, in her teens she'd begun to "phase out," not mentally (like every other high school student), but physically. From her perspective, her surroundings & everyone in them would disappear, leaving behind a bare scaffolding of wherever she'd started, seeming both under construction & on its last legs simultaneously. She was familiar with horror tropes about these spaces, focused on being trapped there, alone, but she found neither her transitions nor the emptiness of her destinations particularly frightening. In fact, she quickly realized she felt more at home "there" than she did "here," & so, at 18, she effectively moved in. She could still return to the so-called normal world at will, but found that her new space was, in relation to her base reality, practically suspended animation. Bodily functions were effectively on pause, including any sense of hunger or thirst or need to sleep, & only seconds seemed to have passed when she returned from it, no matter how long she'd been "gone." At first, she got a great deal of reading done. Then, when she got restless, she began to explore, drawing herself a map as she roamed. She soon discovered that when she ventured even a small distance from her arrival point, the layout of the space did not continue to correspond with the layout surrounding her earthly departure point. Furthermore, her map of the space would only remain accurate if she transitioned from roughly the same physical point again. Which meant it was not a single space, but an infinity of spaces, & when she learned this, she started traveling the Earth to explore more spaces. Years later (for her), she would find that not all such spaces were devoid of life. She would hear a voice whispering her name, a name that until that moment she had not known was her own.
Ether
Many girls in many dimensions, one mysterious piece of jewelry…
Starla
Starla used to have a black thumb. Then she found the black ring…
Elli
Elli had been angling for an invite to the Gomiumi Genomics Compound for over a year, knowing from the get-go that adding her name to the waitlist would lead only to waiting. But armed as she was with confidence, knowledge, & several years of study in Berlin under a recent Nobel Prize winner, her nascent experiments with CRISPR had drawn the interest of numerous colleagues, to such an extent that she'd been able to secure her invitation before even having to consider resorting to less savory tactics…
Fiola
Fiola, visiting her favorite species at an otherworldly aquarium…
Xia
The singular face of Xia, attending an eclectic gallery opening in several alternate dimensions simultaneously…
Inka
Inka, aware of the Minders for several years now and long past cycling through self-doubt (am I dreaming? high? crazy?), had simply accepted their presence, and the fact that no one else seemed to be able to see them, as a novel fact of her life. For the most part, they just floated around, though it was clear from the get-go that they gravitated toward populated areas…
Rǣlia
For her 21st birthday, Rǣlia (known to her friends as "Really") decided to organize a celebratory nighttime gathering at Multiversal City theme park. The evening, attended by a dozen or so of the aforementioned friends, included an expansive dinner and mixed drinks, and then more mixing of drinks, and had been perfectly festive and joyous right up until she'd snatched a random bongo drum (from a couch shaped like a boat) and announced that she wanted to start a drum circle. Suddenly, all of her laughing friends were nowhere to be found…
Gia
Gia, about to bring the hammer down…
Selene
Selene, aboard her spaceship, riding the hyperspace zipline…
Zubaida
Zubaida, glowing and feeling at home on the playa…
Zuira
Zuira put on the black ring and wished for snow…