Parallel Selves, Part Ii

...No longer could they blame it on others, or chock it all up to society, their losses, their failings, due to their choices, a hard truth, and many were not ready. Some would see what parallel selves had done, then find a gun, take a handful of pills, others would set out to remake their lives, convinced it was all a question of will. Most of those too would eventually fail, and join the others in departing this world, people found loved ones lying in their homes, deprived forever of their precious pearls. I myself lost an aunt who had seen a parallel self was a CEO. She was a stock clerk, the sight hurt so much that from this life, by her hand, she did go. A cousin of mine is, somehow, still alive, though so depressed he might as well be dead, after seeing a life with the little boy his ex-girlfriend in college aborted. I guess I am one of those people too, as I struggle with it every day, versions of me, successful and happy, writing best-sellers, blazing my own way. In the end so many people had died that the technology was seen as bad, government banned it to stop the bleeding, but that cat can’t be put back in the bag. It’s estimated twenty-two percent of my Earth’s populations is deceased, nearly two billion, dead by their own hands, thanks to the ‘wonders’ of technology. The dyings have slowed, but they still occur, it proliferates though black-market tech. Hell, I am breaking those very same laws, warning you about how our world was wrecked! But seeing where you are in your research, I feared that you were running out of time, and even a small glimpse of the multiverse is more than enough to destroy your mind. Don’t do it.