A proliferation of portals

When the portals came, there were dinosaurs.
Of course there were dinosaurs.  The narrative pressures were too great - too many minds wanting - too many souls hoping - the portals opened, and the psycho-osmotic pressure thrust the dinosaurs through.  The Universe had become porous, like a mountain of broken rocks through which the liquid stuff of reality itself could pour.

No-one knew why the portals came.  No-one admitted to having made them.  Some said they were an act of God, but God him/her/itself continued to remain silent on the matter.  Others were convinced it was part of a shadowy plot, a sinister conspiracy to bring about a One World Order that bound the whole Earth, not just geographically, but across all times and all parallel iterations of existence.  But then, some people would believe anything.

It didn’t take long for the fuss to die down.  After a while, the profusion of portals became the new normal.  And the influx of entities with many new skills did a great deal for the economy.  There was the usual moaning one expects when immigration is opened up from a new area, but for some reason people were much less inclined to turn out in force against the interesting new foreigners.

It was at about this time that the first anti-portal robots began to appear.  Though they seemed at first to be the rambling and somewhat haphazard creations of unstable fringe elements with old-fashioned views about trans-portal rights, it quickly became apparent that there was real money behind the initiative.  Many portals died during this period, stranding whole swathes of entities in our grey, tepid excuse for a reality, with no way home.

Not long after that, things degenerated.  The war was long and bloody, and nobody could say for sure how many sides there actually were, or indeed what anyone was actually fighting for.  In this way, it was similar to all other wars.

Finally, someone - it was never revealed who - found a way of forging the Master Portal.  As it was opened, a great wind rushed across the face of the earth, and all the portals were recalled, tumbling and fumbling through the air and the dirt, and falling - finally - back into the utter lightness/darkness at this new centre of creation.
After that, it didn’t take long for things to go back to normal.  The only difference is that now - every once in a while - people remember how thin their little reality really is.  They remember how close lays those other worlds, and how fragile our own is.  And then - maybe - they are nicer.  Just a little.
It probably won’t last long.
But we shall see.


The End

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