Two truths and a lie. All three are about me. And no, I am not going to tell you which one is the lie.

1. I have travelled through time.
2. I have travelled across multiple universes.
3. I have travelled to the furthest reaches of existence.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Potentially, everything.

My name is Nicholas Mackenzie. I am 54 years old. I am a scientist. I am a one-of-one.

What I mean when I say that I am a one of one is this: there are precisely 9 different universes in what is popularly known as the multiverse. In all 9 of those universes, there is a slightly different version of you. Though sometimes those differences aren’t so slight. Nevertheless, there are or have been 9 versions of you, there are or have been 9 versions of your mother, and there are or have been 9 versions of your father. There are or have been 9 versions of your grandparents, your wife, your children and so on and so forth.

There is only one version of me.

You probably have questions about this statement. That’s understandable, but I’m not here to answer your questions or explain myself. You will simply have to take me at my word. I will say that I am not the only one of one in the multiverse. There are others, though I cannot say for certain how many. I have only met one other one of one and, well, we’re not ready to talk about what happened there just yet.

So, if we’re not here to talk about me, and we’re not here to talk about any other one-of-ones, what are we here to talk about? We are, and this perhaps won’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who has heard of me before, here to talk about a man who most commonly goes by the name of Victor Forrest.

Victor Forrest is not a one-of-one. There are or have been a grand total of 9 Victor Forrests across the multiverse. Most of these Victor Forrests have travelled through time and across multiple universes (those two pretty much go hand-in-hand, which means I kind of cheated in the game above), but only one Victor Forrest has travelled to the furthest reaches of existence. That Victor Forrest, the Victor Forrest who just so happens to originate from the same universe as I do, is the closest thing I have to a nemesis.

Of course, Victor doesn’t know that he is my nemesis. As far as I am aware, he still thinks that we are the best of friends.

You see, Victor and I have known each other pretty much since the beginning. We both grew up on a small island just off the coast known as Hidden Island. We were neighbours. We went to the same primary school and the same high school. We both had part-time jobs at the same café. We were pretty much inseparable for the first 18 years of our lives. We even managed to fall in love with the same girl. She is also a very important part of this story about everything, but we’ll save her proper introduction until later.

As we got older, and as people always tend to do, Victor and I made decisions about our respective futures that took us down different paths. Our areas of interest were no longer aligned, and we slowly drifted apart.

The thing is, the very moment we started to drift apart, was the very moment that started I realised our different paths weren’t different at all, not when you could see the whole path at the same time. I’m getting a little far ahead of myself though. To bring things back to the easy-to-absorb, Victor and I both left Hidden Island once we had graduated high school, enrolling in universities on the mainland to start our adult lives and leave a mark on the world. Of course, at that time we had no idea how big a mark that would prove to be.

Victor is an artist; his talent is drawing. Unfortunately for Victor, he doesn’t really possess the level of imagination that would make the most of his talent. As I mentioned previously, I am a scientist. My talent, if you can call it a talent, is my inquisitiveness, my curiosity, and my imagination. Just knowing this basic information is enough to paint a picture (pun partially intended) of how we made for such obvious running mates in our youth, how we were destined to grow apart, and why we would inevitably cross paths again in the future.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself once again, the girl I briefly mentioned a handful of paragraphs ago, her name is Alyssa, and in 8 of the 9 universes, she went with Victor Forrest. In 8 of the 9 universes, Victor and Alyssa became a couple, and while those 8 stories have played out or continue to play out in all sorts of ways, it is safe to say that Victor and Alyssa are as close to what people refer to as soulmates as is possible.

However, in that 9^th universe, which just so happens to be the only universe with me in it, Alyssa and Victor did not become a couple. In that 9^th universe, my universe, Alyssa chose to be with me. This of course raises the question of whether Victor and Alyssa would be together in the other 8 universes if there existed 8 other versions of Nicholas Mackenzie. I cannot answer that, and to be honest, it is a rather pointless question. It certainly isn’t what interests me about the multiverse.

Now, have I done enough scene-setting? Has this been enough exposition? Too much, maybe? In any event, there is nothing else I feel the need to share with you right now. I’ve told you that this is a story about Victor Forrest, and I’ve given you a brief outline of my relationship with Victor Forrest, but I am not going to tell you Victor’s story because it is not my place to do so. And I’m not going to attempt to tell you my story because I am not certain you would be able to comprehend all that it entails. Besides, that story is still in progress.

Are you expecting me to tell you which statement I made about myself at the beginning of this monologue is a lie? Or have you already figured it out? I can tell you that you haven’t figured it out because despite what I said and despite the conventions of the game, none of those 3 statements is a lie. I have travelled through time; I have travelled across multiple universes; I have travelled to the furthest reaches of existence. The only thing I will concede is, as far as your understanding of space, time and the cosmos is concerned, that the last one hasn’t happened yet.