rippedtheskyapart | (no subject)

(no subject)

The front door of Milliways opens and a naked man walks through it.

His hair is swept back tidily, his skin fresh and clean and smooth except for a number of scars—varyingly old and varyingly interesting. Almost before he's cleared the threshold, he stops, looking around in a brief, brief moment of total confusion.

Halfway through spinning back around toward the (now closed) Door, he silently explodes into a cloud of fine grey dust.

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"No one seems to be sure," Jim has to admit. "It's either extraordinary technology or magic, and yes, there is a distinct difference between the two here."

Lectures about sufficiently advanced technology are not wanted, thank you.

That temper Jim warned him about wipes all the salt off the table with a violent motion.

Oh, fuck it, he'll try again.

His body coaelsces in the air over the course of several seconds, from the bones out, standing with his arms crossed. Still no clothes, a fact which seems to bother him not at all.

"And how did you come to happen? You're not exactly me, but you're damn close."

He lacks, for example, the scar under his jawline; he has a rather more significant collection of cigarette burns, although this Jim is not without a few of his own, currently on prominent display to anyone who may be looking.

Oh, and he isn't dead. That is one major distinction.

Jim watches the process with open fascination.

(His double, he decides, can learn about Milliways's stance on nudity for himself. It would be entertaining to see how they'd get him to the cells.)

"Multiple universes," he says, looking his double over and likewise noticing differences in scars and markings. "Infinite, most likely, but only a sampling here."

"Hnh," he says.

Vocal sounds are a luxury he truly appreciates these days. Despite repeated experiments, he can't get himself to sound right speaking out of thin air. Sound intelligible—sometimes, barely. Sound right, no.

"I'd ask if there's anything you want to know about your future, but I'm not sure it would apply." He fiddles with his left forearm, peeling away flesh from the bone with a touch of his fingers and smoothing it back down again, much the same way someone else might pick at a loose thread on their sleeve. It parts along the line of the old scar there, whose counterpart he can't see now under the shirt the other Jim is wearing. But a minute ago, looking him over, he felt very clearly that it was two inches too high.

"I'm given to understand it involves blowing my brains out," he says, sounding hopelessly bored. His tone clashes decidedly with the way he watches his counterpart toy with his arm.

The question of Jim's future is boring; the mechanics of this double's existence are not.

"Oh yes," he says, with a smile of fond remembrance. "Then comes the fun part. I'd kill you now if I knew how to duplicate the effect."

His hand lifts away from his arm—detaches entirely, suspended at the end of a smooth linkage of blood flowing through the air between the cleanly severed ends of veins and arteries. He wiggles his fingers in a cheery wave. The appendage snaps back into place.

"I can do tricks," he chirps.

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