#omniscientnpc

How it started:

Jesse runs through the portal, slapping and hollering at the bats in hot pursuit.

They butt heads with eleven mirrors and fall flat on their butt to a ranged, semi-melodic chorus of "ow!"

How it's going:

The twelve of them sit in a blank space faintly dotted with dust motes. It's reminiscent of the End, like some of the hallway portals have been, except there's nothing underfoot but a smooth, flat, mirrored surface that extends in every direction for miles and miles. The air is a pleasant room temperature. There's no breeze. There's no echo, either.

This is not like the other worlds. The portal is not hidden, and it isn't sitting there waiting to be lit. It's right behind all of them, in all twelve directions, a few paces back. It's already lit, and it's waiting patiently. There are no secrets here.

The other eleven Jesses aren't mirror images, even if they act like it. They've all checked: there's no surface to separate them, they can wave over each other's shoulders, clasp hands, and - most alarmingly - replicate the Builder Bump perfectly. (Though the name came up for debate - three Jesses call it the Warrior Whip. Another three call it the Griefer Grab. The remaining three call it the Redstone Rap. Jesse has lost track of which three call it what.)

"This is crazy!" someone says. She has a striped shirt and dark skin and the most familiar eyes Jesse has ever seen.

"I was gonna say that," says the one in the really shiny suspenders, knowing everyone else was also going to say that - and again, it's about the eyes, or maybe about the way he narrows them on purpose just to make a point. It's about the way these people are without thinking about it.

A copy, Jesse thinks, could never replicate them this well on purpose.

"So," Jesse says, "is everyone else thinking what I'm thinking?"

There is an immediate ripple of affirmatives. All of them sound familiar. Like the kinds of things Jesse would think about saying, but never actually say.

"Alternate universes-!" says one, but another interrupts before they can finish.

"Yes, we're all thinking it." They gesture irritably. "And this is pretty incredible, but we probably don't have a lot of time. Everyone sound off: name, last place you saw, and…"

"Favourite colour," suggests a rather more good-humoured Jesse. They earn an exasperated glare from the other Jesse, but everyone nods. It's childish, but sometimes simple works.

They sound off, then. Twelve Jesses - of course, everyone's thinking. Twelve who just got accosted by bats and sprinted off in the portal hallway. (Everyone is a little bit of a mess. Upon checking, one Jesse finds a live bat still nestled in her hair.) Twelve lapis blues.

It devolves a little after that. Everything is a hunting-searching sort of question for a short while as everyone tests each other on whether major life events are the same. Everyone is curious. But they rapidly discover that despite the novelty of meeting their alternate self eleven times over, there's precious little novelty left once you start getting down to the sharp edges.

They start finding out where they could have done better. That's hard enough. Then they find out where they couldn't.

"I told him to stay out of sight, but…"

Someone fidgets. "I asked him to watch my back. He's just a pig. That's as good as telling him to." A beat. "Was. Was just a pig."

"Anyone tell him to stay put?" someone asks. "After dropping the weapon?"

Everyone goes very silent.

"Hey," says one Jesse, as they can see several other of their alternate selves' mouths opening to say the exact same thing: "I don't think I want to talk about this."

"Hear, hear," say several other Jesses. The rest are quiet, but they seem to agree. No, they do agree. Everyone feels the same.

Everyone looks down at the exact same time, like clockwork. Everyone is sitting the same, one leg bent up with a hand on their knee, and everyone is staring at the middle distance very hard and suddenly trying to pretend they can't see everyone else doing the same out of the corner of their eye.

"You think Petra's having a meeting with eleven other Petras right now?" someone says, half-heartedly trying to de-awkward-ify the atmosphere.

It kind of works.

"Nah, the others went into different portals. They're probably fighting squids or something."

"Or bees." The Jesse shudders.

"You guys think there's anything productive we can do?" one of the Jesses asks suddenly.

Nobody seems to have any good ideas about that.

Here and there, there are a few who have held their silence. One or two begin to fidget.

So, Jesse - the first, at least from their perspective (but who knows? It all seems so variable...) - they take the initiative.

"Well, hey," they say, well aware of how this is going to sound: "We should all probably get back at some point. Maybe we won't learn anything here. But we are all the same person, aren't we?"

"Right."

"Sure."

"And?"

Jesse glances around, waggles their arms, and finishes the thought. "You guys wanna hug about it?"