The Three States
The Three States
The Third State was a universe where nothing ever amounted to anything in particular, and you could spend all day waiting for a bus only to discover it had turned into a bowl of apricots.
Side Carr had crossed between universes through a small fissure in the lake floor, and he now crouched by its mouth with countless other entities, drawn like moths to one of the few fixed points in their tortured universe.
On the edge of the circle, where the blue light from the fissure ebbed away into an inky darkness, evolving shapes emerged. A monstrous mouth transformed into a lamb and then a picket fence. A barbecue and a row of petunias passed by, intertwined as if they were courting.
There, too, was Little Madam, still wearing the same low-cut dress with gathered sleeves that she had worn on her eighteenth birthday.
Of course, there are countless universes, but these are the three we are most concerned with here.
The First State contains our own dear planet.
The Second features a world split vertically into two hemispheres. The left is occupied by scientists who are too busy measuring things to realise what a shit show they’ve created, while the right hemisphere is populated with artists. They were banished to the eastern mountains after the war and eke out an existence, knee deep in artwork. without anyone to mend the plumbing.
And the Third State? That one is no picnic. In fact, having a picnic in that one is completely out of the question.
