Spatially Close by…
but in a different universe entirely
If only Side Carr hadn’t taken the Stick, this would never have happened
Art
Art is a man who has spent his whole life being the wrong thing in the wrong place, too artistic for science, too scientific for art, too imaginative for his family, not bold enough to commit to his own talent.
His "big farewell" has gone disastrously wrong, every escape route is closed, and the only door left open leads to a different universe entirely.
Eva
She'd first seen him in the library, sitting alone at a desk, a sketchbook open alongside a book on game theory. She introduced herself. He was surprised anyone had noticed him.
And now he was on the run. If he were to leave the college, something irreplaceable would go with him. If only there were somewhere else where they could meet.
Side Carr
In another universe entirely but unexpectedly close by, Side Carr, a six-legged mutant who used to be a butler, was trying to leaf through a very large book, named ‘Detail of All that Abounds’, that acted as a sort of user manual for the whole universe, when he was surprised by a very large dog dragging a nightwatchman on a long chain. Desperate to make his escape, he grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on; an innocent-looking stick that turned out to be an artificial intelligence. Now, if he’d only left it where it was, Art would still be with Eva, and his brother would still be in the International Space Station.
Jack
Jack is everything Art is not: the physicist, the NASA astronaut, the apple of their father’s eye. It’s hard for Art to ignore his brother’s success; even the college science block has been named after him.
But, thanks to Side Carr’s ineptitude with the stick, a cosmic event causes Jack to step out of the airlock on the Space Station and disappear, experiencing three universes in the blink of an eye, and leaving a man-sized hole over each one he passes through. Jack may be a bit-part character in this story, but without his disappearance, Majesty would never have thought of removing Art to the Second State, and using him to plug the hole that Jack has left.
Majesty
The fact that Majesty found it so easy to infiltrate Barnaby College, impersonate a professor, and kidnap Art back to his own universe is more a failure of higher education than an accomplished move by some interdimensional warrior. He’s a rogue intellectual, morally unreliable and only there because of his ability to slip between States, and his reckless grab-it-all mentality. He detests Art, but gives in to the blindingly obvious fact that without him, his whole expedition will fail. Then there’s the green box and the foam; he wishes he’d never brought it. Jinx keeps contacting him through it and ordering him back home. Apparently, some delinquent has stolen the stick, and they can’t interrogate the manual. So what do they want him to do about it?
Jinx
She'd first seen him in the library, sitting alone at a desk, a sketchbook open alongside a book on game theory. She introduced herself. He was surprised anyone had noticed him.
And now he was on the run. If he were to leave the college, something irreplaceable would go with him. If only there were somewhere else where they could meet.
Side Carr
In another universe entirely but unexpectedly close by, Side Carr, a six-legged mutant who used to be a butler, was trying to leaf through a very large book, named ‘Detail of All that Abounds’, that acted as a sort of user manual for the whole universe, when he was surprised by a very large dog dragging a nightwatchman on a long chain. Desperate to make his escape, he grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on; an innocent-looking stick that turned out to be an artificial intelligence. Now, if he’d only left it where it was, Art would still be with Eva, and his brother would still be in the International Space Station.
Jack
Jack is everything Art is not: the physicist, the NASA astronaut, the apple of their father’s eye. It’s hard for Art to ignore his brother’s success; even the college science block has been named after him.
But, thanks to Side Carr’s ineptitude with the stick, a cosmic event causes Jack to step out of the airlock on the Space Station and disappear, experiencing three universes in the blink of an eye, and leaving a man-sized hole over each one he passes through. Jack may be a bit-part character in this story, but without his disappearance, Majesty would never have thought of removing Art to the Second State, and using him to plug the hole that Jack has left.
Carrington
The college porter was an anomaly.
Side Carr
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