275, 1/2

Erick stared up at Young Erick Flatt from 1997 for a moment longer.

A lot of things were wrong in that moment.

Erick’s mana was sluggish, and if he was being honest with himself, not moving at all. His insides felt dead, but not dead at all—

And then Young Erick Flatt was about to say something more about a gay crisis again, because Erick had been staring for longer than a single moment. Time was moving fast, and Erick’s thoughts were just as sluggish as his mana.

No time for words.

Erick saw an exit, laying on the floor in a pile; some clothes. His clothes, probably. Over there was the door. Erick launched out of the bed and started grabbing whatever was on the ground—

Or at least that’s what he tried to do. He caught himself in the mirror on the wall instead. Blonde. Blue eyes. White. Gym guy. Erick didn’t know this guy at all. Not really.

And then Young Erick looked at Erick from behind, catching both of them in the mirror, saying, “Are you freaking out on me, dude? You really shouldn’t be too freaked—”

“Fucking—!” The girl in the bed thrashed angrily, briefly, but she had been building up her anger for a while, now that she was completely exposed to the air. And then she sat up and glared pure hate at Young Erick. “It’s too cold to rip off covers, Erick.”

She spat the last words at Young Erick, and Erick recognized her. She was Alice, one of his usual fucks that he just now remembered.

“Well you’re awake now, so it worked!” Young Erick ignored Alice and gestured to the boxers in Erick’s hands that he had yet to put on, “If you wanna wear my underwear, go right ahead.” Young Erick reached over and grabbed Erick’s ass. “But I expect it back.”

Erick launched away from Young Erick, but in a normal sort of way, and not in the visceral, magic-empowered way that he probably could have, if he wasn’t still waking up.

“Stop teasing the poor guy,” Alice said, before groaning as she sat on the side of the bed, holding her head. “He’s obviously new at this.” She tried to sneer through the pain of a hangover as she looked up at Erick, but all she managed to do was look tired. Her voice was tired, too, as she said, “A practical virgin.”

Erick grabbed the clothes he thought were his —and not Young Erick’s— and then he put them on as fast as he could—

Erick recalled this moment in time.

It had been buried, but he recalled this day… Somewhat. He actually recalled a lot of moments like this, now that he was here, thinking about it. He looked at Young Erick, and picked out some words that were probably correct, but Erick’s memory was kinda weird right now. He said, “This is never going to happen again.”

Young Erick faked a pout, using a hand to rub the air beside his face, like he was rubbing out tears. “Poor closet case doesn’t know what he likes.” And then he spoke seriously, “We had fun, whatever-your-name-was. Come by the quad again next weekend.” He shrugged. “Or don’t!”

“He’s a fucking worthless townie,” Alice said, as she looked at Erick. “I thought the whole point of you sneaking onto campus was to get fucked. Well, now you did! And now you can get lost.”

Erick suddenly remembered that Alice had always been like that. There was a very large reason that Alice was not Jane’s mother, and that vitriol was part of it.

Young Erick even winced to the side as he saw that vitriol, and then he noticed Erick looking at him, and he said, “Don’t worry. Next time it can be just you and me.”

Alice laughed loudly. Harshly.

Erick said some words that were probably correct, “There won’t be a next time.”

Guys had said that a lot to Erick, back then.

It was some date in 1997, after all.

Young Erick chuckled and said something about something and Alice responded with her own words, but Erick was out of there, with his pants on and his shirt on —backwards and inside out, apparently— and his shoes in his hand. Erick rushed out into the apartment hallway, trying not to panic, because he knew that even the slightest change to his past would fuck everything up down the line…

But then Erick walked a bit slower.

Would his presence fuck up anything at all?

The morning had already happened. Erick was now walking through ‘campus housing’ that wasn’t really campus housing or dorm rooms at all, because this wasn’t really a dorm, and the college wasn’t really a ‘college’. It was a community college, and this was an apartment building right next to the college, and the whole of the city beyond was kinda mashed in with the college to begin with. Only some nominal ‘walls’ contained and separated the college from the city, and only 90% of the people who lived here were students at the community college.

All around Erick, in the early morning hours, were people moving around and getting ready to leave for the first classes of the day. Or, in the case of Old Man Hutch over there, he was getting ready to go fishing. It might have been a Monday, then?

A pair of bros spotted Erick doing his walk of shame and called him on it, yelling those words loud and happy. A woman in a room across the hall came out of her room and roared hatred at the guys yelling about walks of shame, calling them too loud and almost starting a fight, but then the woman’s friend pulled her back.

Erick had already fucked up the timeline just by existing; just by walking through here.

Butterfly flaps, eh?

And yet… Hmm.

Erick wasn’t sure if he had messed up his timeline yet. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things. He did know his way around the place, though, but it had been half a century since Erick had been here, so Erick had needed to walk slowly to remember everything.

The place looked the same, and Erick found himself staring a bit too hard at the wallpaper. It was a bright green floral print that Erick was pretty sure… he recalled a story about the college, years and years after he attended, when he was thinking about going back and finishing his degree. Some wannabe historians had claimed that this apartment building had arsenic in the wallpaper, but that was an 1800’s Victorian London thing. And yet, the people who called this place on its radioactive-green ivy/vine/floral wallpaper were insistent that the government needed to take a look.

The government officers found nothing wrong with the wallpaper, but they did find asbestos in a whole bunch of places. The apartment ended up getting torn down because of that.

… Should he send them a ‘concerned citizens’ letter about the walls, and their arsenic content? Replay that set of history? Or should he circumvent that concern, and send a letter about the asbestos itself?

Erick left that concern for another day.

He had too many concerns right now.

With a practiced walk, Erick skedaddled out of the apartment building—

And then he remembered that the apartment building was located on the forest side of the college, and all the city was in the other direction, across the college campus. Townies, like Erick, had needed to walk across the college campus to get back to most of the rest of town. Most of the time, this was not a problem for the townies, but Erick already saw cops walking around out there, eager to bust townies who ‘weren’t supposed to be on campus’. It was a complete power-trip thing for them, too. Not actually something that they could enforce at all.

Young Erick had found that out later in life, and that drove him to kinda hate the cops just a bit more than he already had.

Erick still wasn’t able to control his mana, to see anything beyond his own eyes, and he certainly wasn’t casting any spells right now, so it looked like he had a walk across a campus full of power-tripping cops who had nothing better to do.

Erick made it to a public washroom instead of walking across campus. It was before the classroom buildings started. He ducked inside. No one was there. It was only 7 am on a… On a day. Maybe Monday? Sunday? Probably Monday. A clock he had passed on the way here told the time, and some students were already up and about, but what was the actual date?

Erick didn’t know the actual date—

He decided the date didn’t matter.

Erick was here, in the past, and that Young Erick was him.

Erick hung out in the bathroom for a while. Mostly, he felt out his soul, and began to wake up his mana. It was there. He hadn’t lost it. He poked. He massaged. But nothing happened. The world was the world, and there was nothing he could do about it except for that which could be done with his hands. Erick stared at his hands, at the unfamiliarity of them. They looked like construction worker hands, with calluses and small cuts that had healed a while ago.

He rubbed his hands together—

“Don’t panic,” Erick said to himself. “No need to panic.”

He calmed himself, breathing easily, and then he rubbed his hands together, trying to wake up whatever weakness had settled into his—

The solidity of the world began to wane. Mana flowed out of Erick’s hands, where he had massaged them, like he had broken up some ice and the river below had been exposed. All at once, all of the ice cap of Erick’s entire body eroded, and Erick was back to being himself, magically. Physically he was still whoever this was.

Erick cackled once, maniacally, and then softer, easier. He had almost emotionally lost it, but now he was back, and that yo-yo of emotion had broken him a little. Also, he was probably fae now, or something like that. Or maybe he was still transitioning?

Well.

Whatever!

Okay!

He had mana.

Good.

With practiced ease that came out more stilted than he wished —he was still waking up, apparently— Erick breathed out mana into the empty men’s bathroom, like he had breathed out a minor cloud of smoke. The mana spread, through the walls, through the floor, through the ceiling and the windows, and Erick was right there with it to see everything it saw. Soon, Erick shifted the mana to invisible Mystical mana, and then Benevolence easily flowed into the world on strong pulses of invisible, intangible power.

Normally, with mana flowing around, other people could sense it if they had the capability. If someone had been looking, they might have seen Erick’s first expulsion of white Benevolence into this world, but even now that first bit of Benevolence was disguising itself with Wizard’s Clarity. People would still see mana if they were out there and looking, but no one was out there and looking. Erick’s Benevolence wasn’t a memetic hazard like with Nothanganathor’s Malevolence; Erick’s Benevolence had become something quieter. In fact, if people wanted to accrete or cultivate with that mana he let loose, they could, and it would work rather perfectly for their established power sets.

… Erick wondered if people could cultivate Malevolence so easily. He hadn’t touched the stuff yet, and he hadn’t had much experience with actual users of the stuff…

Eh.

Later.

Erick cycled his mana for a while, pushing out power, and then letting it come back, and the mana went unnoticed as it gradually flowed back to its source, letting Erick sense the world as though he was simply mana sensing through the ambient mana, like anyone else.

The world looked somewhat like it should…

But there was a difference. A really big difference compared to what Erick had seen in 2047, but he’d get to that later; his plate was already too full of problems.

Young Erick and Alice were walking with each other to class, and Young Erick asked Alice, “Who was that this morning?”

Alice laughed loudly. “I thought you knew him!”

“I thought you knew him.” Young Erick said, “I don’t think I even got to touch him, except in sleep. Do you remember last night?”

“Fuck, dude. I don’t remember shit. That party was rad.” Alice said, “He’s a fucking worthless townie, anyway. He was probably shit in bed.”

Young Erick ignored Alice’s acerbic words. “It was a great party, wasn’t it.” He smiled. “Did you see Margaret dancing?”

Alice sneered at Erick. “You like that bitch?”

Young Erick laughed to stop himself from lashing out, and Alice didn’t notice that at all. Young Erick probably didn’t even notice that about himself; he wouldn’t realize he did that for years to come. Young Erick did try to get Alice to be nicer, though, by playfully saying, “Don’t call her that!”

Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping you with her. Remember to wrap it when you get her. I heard she’s a total slut.”

Young Erick was about to say something about them being sluts, too, but he decided not to press that button. Erick, watching them from half a mile away, recalled guarding his words with Alice all the time, though Young Erick didn’t seem to realize that he was actively doing that yet. He would, eventually.

Young Erick changed the topic to English homework, and to how he had failed to do anything, and did Alice think that he could bullshit his way through the presentation today? Young Erick bet he could. Alice was nicer when it came to schoolwork, and she would end up helping Young Erick with his English presentation on Shakespeare for about 10 minutes. It’d be enough for a C, which was fine.

Erick returned to himself.

Erick was feeling some kinda way. Embarrassment? Subtle loss of opportunity for cheating himself out of a proper education? Happy that the whole arc of his life turned out like it did, anyway? Anger at Alice’s angry nature that Erick hadn’t felt in 50 years? There was a lot there.

… Erick would think about all that later, too. Or probably not at all.

He focused inward on his Status, which he had finally gotten online.

It was not the same as before.

Erick Flatt, [70-ish], [Current Year Earth, Layer 99,081: 1997]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 31%, 30%, 30%

Reson allocation rate: 9%

Soul: 1b per day / 11,574 per second , [Mark of Benevolence Level = 1]

Body: 1500

Mind: 2500

Overall Stability: ↑↑ [+10,532, -15] Basic upkeep

Mp: 121.5t/∞, ↑ [+3,587.9, -5] Basic upkeep

Hp: 121.5t/∞, ↑ [+3,472.2, -5] Basic upkeep

Pp: 109.3t/∞, ↑ [+3,472.2, -5] Basic upkeep

Resons: 19.7t [+1,041.6 = +115.74]

So that was different, but all the numbers were more or less the same as the last time Erick had looked at those numbers. Stuff was a bit rounder than he last remembered, but… Erick liked round things? Sure. Why not.

Erick had other, more important questions.

What the fuck was a Mark of Benevolence?

Erick found out as soon as he looked into his soul.

Everything was the same, yet vastly different, like a childhood home that had been renovated by new owners. The Benevolence crystals that were his Spells and Abilities were still there, and so was the ocean of iridescent white mana, but the Dark headwaters of the ocean had changed, and now there were no Dark headwaters at all. Everything burbled up Benevolence, everywhere. Erick was a self-generating depth of mana that churned and made more of himself with every passing second. As that ocean churned, and as Erick’s Wizard’s Clarity cycled his mana out into the world and then back inside, it brought with it tiny bits of power that it had sampled out there.

Because yeah.

There was magic on Earth.

And yes, Erick’s cycling Benevolence was allowing him to sample all the power out there that he touched, and take it into himself, just as he had done with Genesis so long ago.

Erick would get back to that and all those little magical powers out there later.

For now, he looked at his soul, trying to find the Dark Mark. It was not that easy. Before Erick had eaten his own heart out, the Dark was a vast sky that rained down Benevolence waters into Erick’s everything, supplying him with mana. Now, Erick generated his own mana, and the Dark Mark was…

Where was the damned thing?

It usually wasn’t this hard to—

Ah!

There it was.

The Dark Mark. It was a spot of black inside the white ocean, like a rock to hold onto. From the headwaters of Erick’s everything, to a tiny rock, the Dark Mark looked almost inactive right now. What to make of that? Erick wasn’t sure. He metaphysically poked at it, and it tumbled in his Benevolence ocean like a tiny island, before it settled back down to being simply stable, inside his soul.

Was it stable? It was stable.

Erick went looking for the Fractal Mark next. He found it inside the rim of the ocean that was his soul, near where he had put it to go along with his Wizard’s Clarity. It had taken up the entire rim of his ocean, but now his ocean was a reson-spliced fractal, generated by his Benevolence Itself, and the actual Mark was a tiny crystal floating in the ocean. It was lessened. It wasn’t necessary anymore. Erick’s Benevolence Itself took care of all of the hiding and cycling aspects of his Wizard’s Clarity, automatically. It even trapped the powers Erick’s mana sampled out there in the world, inside of individual fractals in that rim of his soul, keeping them inactive until Erick looked at them and wanted to try them out… Maybe? Is that what was happening there?

Hmm.

Erick picked up the Fractal Mark and set it next to the Dark Mark, setting the ocean to still around them, to keep them in place, and held. The two universal marks soon began to gently orbit within the depths of his soul.

The rest of Erick’s Benevolence-crystal-locked Status was the same as before.

Erick came out of himself and stood there in the bathroom.

He stood there for a while, just thinking.

And then he tested himself. Erick shaped some of his mana in his aura, and without using any special powers at all to keep his magic together, here in the manaless atmosphere of this Earth. He released that shaped mana as [Force Bolt]s that struck the bathroom tile, chipping the off-white glaze.

The Bolts worked exactly as they should have. Before Erick’s creation of Wizard’s Clarity, Erick had to string together some Domain work and other magics to keep his mana together inside a manaless atmosphere, but here, the power just worked fine. Wizard’s Clarity was doing exactly as it should have been doing.

The Bolts still disintegrated, as broken magic normally did, and then the mana that made up those Bolts drifted in the air, making its way to Erick’s body, where it joined with him. There was no magical trace upon the chipped tile; just the new damage.

So his powers were working as expected.

And this was his own past.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He could see that this was his own past. Erick expanded his senses wide and saw everything. This was the community college that Erick had attended for two or three years —depending on how you counted it— and Young Erick’s apartment room had the same posters of the Simpsons and Nirvana and Pulp Fiction that Erick had had. There were even the same sports posters hanging on the walls, of basketball guys and football guys that Erick didn’t really know, but his hookups certainly did. Of course this was 1997 and it was pretty fucking weird to talk openly about gay stuff with strangers that were probably into it, but which you weren’t quite sure, but the posters were a good part of the softer way to ask guys what they thought about other guys. And then there were the Jenifer Anniston posters; those were much more socially acceptable.

That Young Erick was him, at 26. Not 20, like Erick had imagined back there waking up in that room, all disoriented. He still looked 20, though. Erick had gone from high school to the job scene, and then he had gone to college because he wanted something more out of life. Young Erick had already spent several years at this point in time working shit jobs.

First there was the pizza place, and then the retail, and then he got passed up for manager because he didn’t have a proper education…

Erick left that past in the past, and considered Infinity.

Could this have been a side slice of Infinity? A variation-reality of Layer 99,081, Earth? Not his history?

Erick closed his eyes in thought, and then he opened them again, focusing on his Lightning Path, which was working just fine, too. The thing about the Path, when used in a certain way, was that it allowed Erick to view the fates of certain people, if he focused on those people well enough. It wasn’t a clear picture. Personal choices could change a lot.

Erick focused on Young Erick, and to him, the world fractured into futures.

Young Erick was in for some hard times ahead, followed by all the ones that Erick would look back on and cherish for how fleeting and good they were. There was Margaret, and then she vanished, and then came Jane, and everything fell apart before it came back together later, though things only truly got better when Jane was 12, and able to be on her own for a while.

And then, years after that…

Veird.

If nothing else happened, then Erick was 99% sure that this was his personal Earth, circa Young Erick Flatt, the one that would become the Apparent King.