Operation: One percent

Chapter 56

Margaret

How do I move on?

How can I ...possibly save Maryam?

I am tired.

This is my 7th universe...7th chance and the last one to save her. To change what happens to Maryam.

In every universe, I was too late. 

At first, I killed her by my own hands by accident. I was putting her to sleep, and I fell asleep too. Only to crush her with my weight.

That tragedy was too much to bear. As a biology engineer, I drowned myself in working on the database to store Maryam's DNA, just so she could never be lost. It took hours to map her entire genome.

One day, I received an email from an unknown source. It instructed me to go and check out the desk of one of our programmers, whose name I don't even remember anymore, and I found it incredibly cryptic, but regardless I did. 

I saw the programmer's hypothesis on "remaining eternal". It was a science paper of his, but it basically said that there must be a version of us in each of the seven Universes.

A small hope sparked inside of me, but I didn't even know what to do with that information, but I worked hard on making friends with him. He said it was only a philosophical piece, but I didn't believe it.

I suppose he took pity on me, so he developed an intelligent hologram where it would read Maryam's genome and convert it into an AI. Even though somewhat smart, it wasn't enough. However, in a dream that felt too real, I stumbled across an inconsistency in what acted like a black hole in the way it sucked everything in, but this one was not "black". It was a spectrum of colors, 1 billion light years away from us. An incredible wormhole.

I couldn't stop thinking of it.
I was obsessed with it.

So I talked to him, explained it, and he initially disregarded it but with my constant pleading, he created a frequency. It would act like a bridge, and make it possible to travel to another reality. He simply converted my DNA and atoms into binary numbers and altered the AI, previously designed to act like Maryam, to communicate with the wormhole so it could send simple radio signals and scan at great speed. In other words, it would match and override anything that resembled an AI, and with that, it would override any version of me in the specific reality of my current one. However, when it was finally time for me to subject myself to this experiment, he didn't want to proceed with it. He said that the consequences could be catastrophic. 

So I stole his code and memorized everything. Each detail, each number. I triggered the AI and the last thing I remember was red rays of scanner reading me, and everything about me, only to be woken up in another universe, with Maryam alive.

I was so happy and I couldn't believe it. And in this universe, I was an astrophysicist and a divorcee. I had a lovely suburban house and a golden retriever.

In this universe, Maryam got run over by a car while she was crossing the road.

Once again, I did everything I could to make sure that I jump into another universe but this time, no one would be there to stop me.

Third, I woke up and coughed blood, and this time, my circumstances were different in forms of occupation. In this one I was a doctor, needless to say, I had no idea about medicine. So I took several days off.

Maryam drowned in a river by suicide in this universe.

Again, I did the same thing. I transcribed the code from my memory, and I knew would make me jump.

In fourth I woke up in a hospital, suffering from cancer. In this one, she got bitten by a dog, and the dog was infected with rabies.

In the fifth universe, I was stuck in a wheelchair, my daughter being a mere toddler. Somehow, when I wasn't watching, she climbed up to the window and fell from the seventh floor.

I also concluded that with each universe I made a jump to, my health was disintegrating more and more. 

In the sixth, she slipped on ice and cracked her skull, and I was so angry that I set the whole building on fire.

Only in this universe, I started as a child and Maryam got to be fully grown. Only in this universe...I had an actual shot because every disease was curable.  For some reason, Lilith was blocking me to jump, and perhaps the reason was that Maryam was still alive. Or maybe, because it wanted to try and control me now. 

People's thoughts were watched and their actions were, and in this universe, previously benevolent AI changed into something cancerous, becoming alive when I came as a volunteer during their experiment, wakening it from hibernation. 

Whenever I wanted to tell Ace of my secret, I was interrupted by otherworldly interventions. 

Also, in this universe, I met Ace.