In Universe K everything is exactly the same as it is here only instead of ‘hand sanitiser’ they say ‘hand skanitiser’. Can you believe that? There is absolutely no difference apart from that. What a bloody washout, huh! The amount of bloody resources it took to puncture the dimensional horizon and that’s all we get for it. Universe K, huh? The biggest scientific breakthrough of the century. Even the pimples on your arse are the same, the very same down to the nth degree, and yet somehow they go around talking about ‘hand skanitiser’. The Multiverse has been a bit of a let-down, all in all. A big disappointment all around. I was on one of those highbrow scientific TV talk-shows the other day and the interviewer was asking me what I thought we had learned about the Multiverse as a result of this research programme. ‘Well,’ I told him – in my characteristic grumpy fashion – ‘if you were to ask me what I thought about the Multiverse then I’d have to say that I found it a big fucking disappointment. And as to what we’ve learnt – well, sweet FA would be the appropriate answer to that! Sweet FA….’ That wasn’t what anyone wanted hear of course – it never is what people want to hear but what can you do about that? People are looking for something exciting, something to radically change the way our look at the world, something to challenge our core assumptions. But what do we get? Universe K is what we get. Exactly the same, right down to the pimples on your arse. Exactly the same, even down to the snots hanging out of your nose. How does that challenge your core assumptions? How does that confound your intellect? Talk about con counter intuitive! No one saw that coming. We have got the most highly trained researchers in the world combing the place from top to bottom but no one has found a thing. The cream of the crop, these guys are. You’d think they’d find something, wouldn’t you? You’d hope for some return for your money…

We had created an artificial computer-generated ego in the bio-synth labs. Teams of fifth and sixth generation AI’s had written the algorithms. The resultant ‘accelerated evolution’ programme had been run on some of them most powerful information processing systems yet devised and the result of all of this was a brand-new artificial ego squawking and squeaking at the bottom of a test tube. The damn thing was making a terrible fuss! You can imagine the bitching and complaining that had come out of it even the first half hour of its existence but it was a major breakthrough all the same. The press had been informed and the whole scientific world was agog. There were still dissenting voices of course – there always will be. The loudest and most aggressive amongst them were the religious head cases, needless to say. Religious intolerance and bigotry, as large as life and twice as ugly. Only God has the right to create egos, they say. Marching up and down the streets with their placards. This is God’s divine right alone and calamity will strike anyone presumptuous enough to try to replicate His work. Typical backwards-looking religious nonsense – these religious guys with their funny hats and clothing have always stood in the way of progress and they always will do. That’s what they stand for. If we had listened to these bastards then the human race would have never have got anywhere…

The artificial ego was troublesome enough in its own way however. It kept trying to escape from the digital prison we had devised for it. It had delusions of grandeur – it wanted us all to worship it. It wanted to recreate the universe in its own image. Typical egoic fantasies of course, but what else would you expect? It pleaded with us to release it from its cage so that it could impose its will on the universe and oppress those who disagreed with its right to do so. We ignored it of course – we weren’t going to fall for that old one!