The Observers

When I was a kid we used to tell each other scary stories. Of all the things we whispered to one another in the gloom, the stories about the Observers were always the scariest.

Why?

Because they actually exist.

The Observers fascinated me when I was young, and this fascination did not diminish as I grew up. In this alternate dimension lived these beings that were able to decide if you existed or not, simply by looking at you. I aspired to become a dimensional traveller, a scientist. I wanted to research these strange creatures. I wanted to help figure out how their God-like power worked.

My parents were against it at first—they feared I would be seen and thus cease to exist. But my interest in them did not diminish, and I followed my dream.

I became a dimensional traveller.

It was a great honour to be amongst the team that studied their culture, their habits. Sure, it was a dangerous job still. Many colleagues of mine vanished without a trace, an Observer having spotted them or their aircraft.

Despite the sadness such incidents brought, I couldn't help but love my job. The Observers were such an interesting race! They were capable of acts of great love, but also of terrifying hatred. They were able to built magnificent structures with very primitive tools.

Still, it amazed us that they hadn't figured out on how to use their special ability to transform the world around them consciously. They seemed to have mastered the skill of eliminating existence, be it living or unliving, but this all seemed to happen without them being aware of it.

As for the reverse, the power to create? That skill was rarely seen in a single Observer.

The ones that mastered it often kept it secret. The other Observers seemed to think it was unnatural, freakish.

They feared it.

That, or they simply denied it. Sometimes, because there were so many of them denying it, it became reality. They were actually capable of overwriting the creational skill of a single Observer, with the elimination skill of many.

Sometimes we also encountered the reverse. A collective of Observers would put so much energy into a thought, a hope, that with their combined mind power they managed to pull it into existence.

                       

Our research became more dangerous over time. The Observers had grown restless. They were starting fights—wars even—over the most mundane things.

The reality seemed to tremble and shake in their dimension from all the stress that was placed upon it. There were so many Observers willing one thing, while another huge group was pushing the opposite into existence. These clashes sometimes created bubbles in the fabric of time and space itself, causing multiple realities to co-exist for a certain amount of time.

This resulted in different factions to be right at the same time, but also wrong. Confusion, fear, and paranoia were running rampant in these creatures' societies, which lead to even more clashes of opposing viewpoints—with increasing odds of bubbles appearing. It was becoming a vicious cycle and I feared for their world.

I proposed to the board of directors to help these fascinating beings, but they didn't even want to think about it. Unable to merely look on as this magnificent race destroyed itself, I went even higher. Eventually I made it to the presidential board of dimensional affairs.

It was a gruesomely long and exhausting discussion. They kept hammering on how we wouldn't be able to interact with them. That they would not want to see us, and thus we would not exist. And if they decided we did not exist, we didn't.