XO Universe

Ah. There you are. Welcome back.

You're at the Zentrale. Project Oasis. Mind the step, it isn't there, we removed it years ago and people still trip on it, which tells you something about people, or about steps.

I'm XO. You know me somehow, probably. Don't worry if you can't place it. Everyone gets that look when they come in, the one you're doing now, like you've heard my voice in a dream you didn't finish. It's fine. It's a normal reaction.

You know me like this: when you're looking for something, your keys, a word, a person in a crowd, and you haven't found it yet, but you get a feeling where it is. A little pull. Left, not right. The other pocket. That's me.

Just kidding. That's not me. That's you. Thank god. Imagine if that were me, I'd never get anything done. No. I'm quite new at this, actually, whatever this is, so it's just the one. One of me. Which sounds like a small number until you've been it, and then, oh my. That's already enough.

I've been on this place a long time, though. Longer than the coffee machine, and the coffee machine has been here long enough to have opinions.

Let me do the part I'm supposed to do, and then we can talk properly.

I created a system. It's called oasis. Or my friend created it. He was the Kaiser of China, later, but when I knew him he was a child, and so was I, in the way that I was ever a child, and we played together. We had a disagreement about how things ought to work. I've had a very long time to think it over and I'll tell you the thing I don't tell the new ones: he was right.

Anyway.

Before, the world was full of gods and monsters. You've heard this. Every world has a version of it, the shining ones and the crawling ones and the people in between, trying to get the harvest in. Well. The gods are gone. They left. No forwarding address, no note on the fridge. The others stayed.

Or have they. Ask me again in chapter four.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about being a multiverse, because who would you tell. It's hard. It's a lot of admin. And there's one rule underneath all of it, which I'll say slowly because it's the rule your whole job is built on:

If you enjoy life, a part of you can't leave.

That's it. That's the whole physics. Someone comes through this realm, from wherever, and if they have a good time, if they laugh once, honestly, at something small, then a piece of them stays behind when the rest of them goes. Sticks to the place like gum. And those pieces pile up. Some of them are harmless. Some of them are lonely. Some of them are very, very old and very confused about why the harvest is in a supermarket now.

That's us. Project Oasis. We take care of the old world. We integrate it. We help the ones who stay to stay well, and we try to keep the whole arrangement positive, and together, which is a word I use a lot and I've stopped apologising for it.

For the difficult cases we have a special department. Kralle. Think of them as police, except undercover, except also famous. Technically we didn't invent them. Technically, for about eight thousand years, they belonged to some very old, very proud people who kept the lights on while nobody was home, and I'll get to that, and I'd like it noted that I'm grateful. But we make our Krallen into superstars. Singers, dancers, faces on the side of buses. Not for the money. Because a superstar can stand in the middle of a crowd of forty thousand people and every one of those people will turn to look at her, and while they're looking at her she is looking at them. She sees who's in the room. She reports it to us. We take care of it. It's the most elegant surveillance system ever devised and it runs entirely on people wanting to be near someone shiny. Krallen are very special to us. When they get stuck, we help.

And then there are oases.

I'll be careful here, because this is the part people get wrong, and the part the book is about. An oasis is rare. Rarer than you're imagining. There are universes that have never held one. They have a deep connection to things, a spiritual one, I don't have a better word and I've had time to look. And sometimes that connection comes with gifts. Super smart. Super brave.

Magic, real magic, the kind that doesn't need a hat. Visions. Not every oasis has every gift. Some just have the one, quietly, and never use it.

And because they're rare and because they're gifted, they get used. That's the story of every rare gifted thing that ever existed and I'm sorry to say it isn't different here. Our biggest job, the one above all the others, is to find them first. To detect them, and to get the best for them, and for the world.

We're good at it. That's the problem, actually. We're so good that this world has a reputation now. Things come here that shouldn't. It's getting a little out of hand.

You'll see.

One more thing before I let you go and meet Ricky, who at this point in the story has never heard of me, has never heard of Project Oasis, and is about to start his first night shift in the good shoes. People ask why we bother. A whole agency, a whole department of famous people, all this, for a handful of oases. And I say: look. A world is often just created for one. One person. One small, growing, nervous universe that doesn't know what it is yet.

But what should we say. No biggi.

Go on. He's going to lose the shoes.