Following the battle of @Qudeisha, there was a long after-party in the Quetzal. Citizens of both Quincy and @Quincy II played alternating sets in a scorching battle of the bands, ska vs. rockabilly. There were no injuries, except when someone from the Quincy twisted their ankle on a stage dive. There were Queens of Tropicalia from Quyền, and laser shows you could see in daylight from the @Quintana, and elders from the @Quennel were giving rides in the pockets of their giant smocks as they floated over the surface in their huge, gas-filled forms. The kids from @Quinto really dug it. I wish @Quynn & @Quinn had been there to see it.

The Quenby seems to have been destroyed. Or at least dispersed beyond recognition. Noticeably absent from the festivities was the @Quince. We assume she's retreated back to her world. Tragic @Quince. And poor Quintella.

After my great journey, I was so looking forward to getting back to the Quimby. But now that I've arrived, I can't help but feel something's off. They say you can't step in the same river twice. That's what travelers say causes the "Larf Lag" when you get back to your home dimension -- it doesn't seem the same as the one you left and you get paranoid. You think landed in an almost (but not quite) identical parallel, but can't quite pin it down...

I'd never heard of the Unified Reality Border Police before. I didn't run into them on my way out, or on any of my transits between continuums. Are they new? Is this because of the reality accident that @Big Jim mentioned? Or is it what @jarvis saw on TV? Luckily they let me through, but it was weird.

The deployment and disposition of the troops was optimal. We had all the forces of the Unified Parallel Universes under our command. We were allied and working towards a single goal.

And even with all of us together, it wasn't enough.

Ranks upon ranks of demolishing ideas stood arrayed around the branes of the Quenby. The singularly trained Pinyin Jiǔ, some with version numbers too high to comprehend, posed with studied indifference looking at their nails. Flocks of vicious Calabi Yau chewed the scenery, hanging from the Kähler manifolds of Chern class Devastators as they revved their engines in the streets. Mock Holes threatened to implode reality around them as they idled their screws on the Ricci Flats.

Then all hell was unleashed.

The Quenby's reputation for destruction was well-earned. World after world had fallen before it. One by one, realities caught in its path were shattered. No world had come to another's aid, and the Quenby had never been attacked offensively. Now, confronted for the first time, the full force of the Quenby was unleashed. Here was the power that had devoured the @Quinto, almost obliterated the @Quince, and utterly destroyed the Quintella.

It was more than the UPU could withstand. Division after division of the most perfect, immortal, ultimately evolved and endlessly iterated super soldiers and killing machines of a thousand worlds fell below the crushing event horizon of the Quenby. The combined army of the Unified Parallel Universes was about to be routed.

And then the @Quince appeared. In her bandoliers and gambler's hat, just like in the stories. Her hands moved too fast for the unaided human eye to see, and even with the time-slowing goggles she appeared multi-armed, brandishing her silver pistols, a trident, a conch, swords, a flower. She does a diving roll behind an old horse cart and pops up on the other side.

"This one's for Quintella."

The bullet moves like a supersonic shark, increasing in mass as it approaches the speed of light. The Quenby moves its mouth in slow motion, making a revelatory "O" as the slug makes contact with its third eye, and explodes.

I got out of the @Quinto as soon as I could. I felt bad abandoning those poor kids, but I couldn't do anything for them there. They survive, just barely, by scavenging on their own world, or the @Quince, but only by being addicted to that horrible elixir. I would have just been dead weight, eating up their meager supplies.

So I opened the next locket. The Quetzal. And it couldn't be more different from @Quinto or the @Quince.

It's like the United Nations of parallel worlds here. I recognize people who must be denizens of the Quyền, in their tropicália fashions and bossa nova swagger; the gassy giants of the @Quennel; the resplendent royal robes of the @Quintana people... even the bobby sox and leather of the rockabilly Quincy world, being kept at a distance from the teddy boys from @Quincy II. The grass is green and the plazas are wide and the fountains are flowing and it's a beautiful day in the Quetzal.

But the most remarkable of all is the Quetzal himself. Or itself? It's hard to tell, but he's huge, like 15 feet tall, in a robe made of giant parrot feathers and a mighty staff and a helmet that makes his eyes sparkle like rainbows. He has a radiance that makes him look...godly? I've never seen skin like that. And everyone treats him like a god. You can't help it.

He's leading a special session of people from all the worlds. It turns out there's one thing that's worrying everyone. One thing that they're all afraid of.

And they call this scary thing the Quenby.

Nobody should try to get through the Quince alone, man. We found @Quasar lost in there and he looked bad, real bad, shivering and covered with ash and leaves. My troop picked him up and dusted him off and, quiet like mice, we passed through the border and made it to Quince's gate. Just as we slipped through, I swear I saw her in the twilight - just like everybody describes her - in her bandoliers and gambler's hat - starting to draw on us.

Luckily, the drugs wore off just then, and we found ourselves back in our burned out bunker. No place like home! See, in our world, there was a gigantic nuclear war. The whole planet. Blown up and poisoned. Don't feel bad for me though, it was a long time before I was born. But things are still real tough. Since the whole place was wiped out, the only way to get survival supplies is to steal it from other worlds. And how we get there is Dr. Quinto's World-Decoding Elixir. You take it, and as long as it lasts, you find yourself in other worlds, and whatever you can pick up and carry comes back with you when it wears off.

But see the trouble is, the only place we can get to with it is the Quince. Which is like the one place worse than here.

Good Evening as always, ladies and gentlemen!

I fear I am a tad late to the usual nightly party... How long have I been gone? Although I am almost always impeccably on time, dimension hopping in the fashion that I have been doing is quite disorienting indeed. I worry that my lovely audience may have lost interest by now.

Today (for me, at least), while searching for possible branches in fate, I found one particularly interesting reality! This was nearly exactly like our own, with a few minor changes sprinkled in. You'd only really notice most of them if you had such a keen eye as my own, except for one quite obvious difference: the student body is split into three-and-a-half teams. Or at least, that's how I see it.

It barely took any time at all before I got my explanation of the rules. In this universe, when enrolling at Psyhigh, you must choose one of the four teams available based only on the name. There is no changing teams, afterwards. If I remember correctly (and I do), then there was Fortune, Intrepidity, Whist, and Convivial. For whatever reason, the mere existence of these teams has split the student body into vengeful, warlike mini-armies. They utterly *loathe* anybody not partial to their team, and somewhere along the line, things got a little out of hand.

All students are proudly seen going from class to class in their respective team jackets, with pins on their bags—that is, all students that aren't on team Convivial. Most students that were part of that group hide it, now, as just a few years back there was a mass slaughtering that Fortune was responsible for, leaving Convivial's numbers low, sending them terrified and into hiding. Whist was mostly indifferent, with Intrepidity looking up to Fortune and trying to follow their example.

I believe the main difference between this timeline and our alpha version is that the staff here are significantly more violent, not to mention manipulative. I'm almost positive there was some kind of background direction for things to end up like this.

Now, despite this being pretty entertaining on its own, the main reason I bring this plain of existence up at all is that I am absolutely positive that I saw the alpha @Quasar while I was passing through. They had no jacket, or even a pin, and seemed to be mostly confused rather than competitive. The only abnormality would be the amount of lockets they were holding on to... Let's just say it was quite excessive.

After doing some quick research on the matter, I am certain that was the alpha @Quasar . So, if you can read this, hello! I plan to hunt down your whereabouts as soon as I find the time (and believe me, I've got plenty), so look forward to it, mon ami~

Oh!—and pick me up a souvenir from that lovingly purified zone, while you're waiting~!

Sincerely,
Alice

Oh dear. Crossing the Quince has become rather difficult. None of the other realities have been so inhospitable. Or bleak.

This is what I imagine a "demilitarized zone" to be like. Desolate and dusty. Burning TVs and razor wire and trenches. Endless grey skies. A hand-painted sign that says I'D TURN BACK IF I WERE YOU.

There hasn't been a soul in sight since I arrived. I've been skirting the edges of this highly uninviting border, looking for a way in, camping beneath the occasional dead tree, but there hasn't been a break in the scenery. Almost like an endless video loop. Not a gate or a guard house or a road or a trail. I suppose I could turn tail and open another locket, but then be more lost than ever.

Wait! There are shadows moving...

POSTED: KEEP OUT. NO TRESPASSING. NO MULTIVERSAL TRAVERSING.

We are CLOSED. No Tourists. No Visitors. This Hilbert Space is Off Limits.

We have Turned Up the hUbble volume to eleveN.

Our p-branes are FULL UP!

Stay beyond our event horizon or face the consequences.

THIS MEANS YOU!

Hauling myself back up the clamshell reality chain has really been maddening, let me tell you. If only I could have followed the exact order, I would have folded myself right up from where I came and everything would be back to normal. Sigh. But the lockets only want to fit in certain ways, and now I'm many universes off course.

It's like making my way down skyscraper stairs, and each new floor is a whole new world, with new costumes and script and scent-profiles. The tropicália universe of Quyền, the elephant house zoo with Queen, Quillon's aerie citadels...

When I close each pendant into the next, it's like a great shade is pulled across the sky, like pulling down the curtains at night. Is this where the phrase comes from? It's curtains for you! But the next new world always arrives, and I know the others haven't really gone anywhere. It's me that's moved on.

Blessings from the Prismatic Rainbow Holiness of the Peacock Feather Empire!

We very much enjoyed @Quasar's visit to our lands. What a well mannered young person! We spent time wandering in the shimmering showers of the Chromatic Fountains, the opalescent wastes of the High Diamond Deserts, and in the Pearlescent Palace with the Iridescent Empress herself.

@Quasar was quite a sport. Though I'm sure the polychrome photonic display was painful for his dark adapted eyes, he never complained. I did hold the peacock feather in front of his face the entire time, though, in an attempt to protect him from the worst of it.

We wish him luck on his travels through the many worlds!

When I first created humans I was afraid of their gas. So explosive! Just building up inside them and erupting like that? Doesn't it scare you? My first prototypes were completely destroyed by it. Forget disease, or genetic malfunction, it was the gas, man.

Now the Quennel world is completely populated by beings who understand their gas is a gift, and when it gurgles up through their noses and ears and occipital vents it creates a joyous trumpeting call. It also plays a central role in their breeding rituals.