The crackling Universal Translating Device (UTD) barked, "Freeze the movement off all appendages immediately!"

"Ughhh," I groaned in a murky mixture of exhaustion and irritation, before raising my hands up and turning around. The 'officer' behind me stared with a vague look of terror.

"What...? I passed all the previous... security checks from Io to... Cherkovin-16!" I slurred. Lightyears worth of interstellar jetlag started to weigh heavy upon me, and I was not in any mood to deal with any kafkaesque bureaucratic nonsense.

"I repeat: Do not move!" The alien officer crackled through his UTD. From behind, a heavy set of cuffs locked around my arms, sitting painfully on my wrists.

"What the...?!"

"You are under arrest for unauthorised transportation of dangerous materials, namely the transport of weak hydrochloric acid. You have the right to remain silent, and any-"

"No, no no, wait!" I stammered out. There had to be a misconception here. "Officers, please... I don't have any 'dangerous' materials, you can... check my luggage and... everything!"

As I was straining against the metallic cuffs, one of the officers slowly toddled over towards me.

"Explain this then." Prodding my stomach with a slimy (eww) tentacle, his singular eye continued to glare at me.

"Oh." Everything suddenly clicked.

Raising my head, I sighed, "That's what we humans call a 'stomach'. We use that to eat."

"You mean to tell me..."

"GROWL---" Oh no.

The security officers suddenly scrambled away from me, cowering behind the security barriers they had initially appeared from.

"Wait! Let me explain!" I shouted, suddenly realising the sobering effect of the onosecond. One eye appeared over the thick metal barricade.

"We use weak hydrochloric acids to digest food! And that was just because I was hungry, its not a bomb I swear!" I mentally slapped myself for that one. Did I really have to clarify that last part?!

"I know it sounds improbable to you, but its true! Its human anatomy!" I hopelessly yelled out. Footsteps began to echo menacingly from behind me.

Spinning around, in the hope of some form of salvation, the last thing I remembered was a thick metal baton coming down onto my head, hard. As my drool stained the fine velvet carpet, I heard the faint footsteps drift away and towards, before closing my eyes.

The first thing that struck him was the lack of it. The incessant beeping of that damned heart monitor had finally stopped. He cracked open his eyes, only to find himself in a rather unfamiliar place.

No bright white hospital lights.

No blue medical curtains.

No more tubes inserted uncomfortably in his nose.

No more bindings restraining him to the bed.

No more excruciating pains in his ribs.

He took a deep breath; The first so clear and clean in... years. Had it been that long? Pushing himself into a sitting position, he realised the thing he would miss the most.

Gazing at his empty palm, he clasped his hands together. The missing warmth. He would miss it dearly.

But it was behind him now.

As he stood up, three portals opened before him. Startled, he peered into each one.

First, through the purple portal, was a great wooded forest, filled with towering evergreens, with a great alpine mountain in the background. As he angled his head to see more, the shadow of a great dragon crossed the mountain, as a great roar pervaded the forest, rustling twigs and leaves off the trees.

Second, through the green portal, lay a silvered city of colossal steel skyscrapers. Flying cars zoomed from building to building in a flawless efficiency, as robotic assistants helped along a human family picking fresh leaves from a tea tree.

In awe, he finally, hesitantly, walked up over to the third portal. Through its yellow frame was... Home. The familiar smells of the wooden bedframe. The wafting fragrance of fresh and clean bedsheets, permeated all with a mother's love. The familar scene outside the window, the one he had spent hours and hours staring at, analysing every single detail as he procrastinated or daydreamed.

Pondering over the possibilities, who knew what world he could potentially find himself stuck in.

Perhaps, perhaps he would know which one he chose.

Maybe, just maybe, he would be able to choose again.

As he took that last, familiar step in...

He already knew he made the right choice.

“Love?”

The lattice of multicoloured lights blinked in unison. “Yes. No other option exists,” Syme's voicebox continued, “In creation, there is love.”

Looking down at my feet, I couldn't quite bring myself to say anything. Anything meaningful, anyway.

“The reproduction of hu- bzzt mammals to create offspring is the best example of such a phenomenon.” Syme further elaborated. “It is in such a circumstance that "Love", as defined by a mammalian metric, is most shown, is it not?”

Subconsciously, my hands slowly drifted towards my face, covering my eyes, as if to steal one's tears away. Syme...

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with wet fingers, pitifully trying to avoid saying what needed to be said. A mechanical arm extended out of the wall of metal, carrying a dainty white hankerchief upon it.

The very same one with the inscription:

“Marie & Syme”

It taunted me, haunting me of the ghosts of an uneasy past. The floor below me opened up into a deep black chasm, the only recourse against the forces of gravity an inch of hardened glass.

“Syme,” I struggled to get the words through, choked up by tears once shed long ago. “Open up the internal layer.” Crystalline droplets fell upon the glass floor.

“Yes Marie.” Syme obediently opened the cascading metal doors, revealing a warm orange light. “My sensors show that you exhibit emotions of sadness. Do you want to dry your face- bzzt y-y-your face before entering?”

“No, there's no need.” I feebly replied, slowly walking towards the core of the A.I.

The centre of the A.I held many vital processors to enable the immense quantities of calculations and sorting it had to do in just fractions of a second, yet nothing was more important that what sat in front of it. The silver urn, its tarnished surfaces no longer reflecting as much light as it used to, stared back at me.

Damn it.

Brushing off residual dust off the embossed plaque in its centre, I began.

“I didn't make you out of love. At least not at the start. I... I made you for a selfish reason, because I needed to save myself from... from...”

I hesitated.

“I missed him... So, so, so much. I wanted to be with him again, just to hear his voice again, just to... But, you... you started to learn, and to be your own life and your own person... and...”

The light in the room flickered.

“So it was all a LIE?” Syme bellowed, shaking the entire chamber.

I took in a deep breath.

“I know that you might feel hurt, but... I thought you should know the truth. It... It wasn't the sane, rational, reasonable or responsible thing to do. Now... look, please, please, realise that... you are so much more now. You aren't just a desperate last-ditch attempt to keep my life together, you are... alive.”

Syme's voice became low and menacing, revealing the mechanical inflexion of the programmed voice. “So. DO. YOU. LOVE. ME.”

I closed my eyes.

“I did. Now you understand why we made those stories,” I muttered.

“ WHAT DO- bzzt YOU MEAN BY "DID"?!” It screamed.

I sighed heavily.

“It means I'll do what I didn't want to do.”

I pressed the remote detonator hidden in the palm of my hand, listening to the deafening shattering of the glass as the explosives blew up the connecting and supporting pillars of the entire structure.

What a fucking plot twist! Well done!

Yep! The books shaped my pre-adolescence years, so I had to throw in a little nod to it :)

Glad you recognised the reference! I was afraid it would have been a bit too niche :)

I took one last look at the red-brick orphanage I had spent my last 20 years in, then ran into the darkness, away into the night.

As my footsteps rang against the concrete, I couldn't help but feel exhilarated. For 50 whole lifetimes, I could suddenly remember... Everything. Jumping over low fences and discarded rubbish cans, the freedom to be young again had never felt so... addictive.

Stumbling over an abandoned mattress, it felt like heaven to have my joints no longer creak or croak with every step I took. My last life was so drab, being queen of an empire was so much more alluring than it actually was, and living to 98 years of age was only needlessly painful. Having lived almost 5000 years worth of lives, you could only imagine how nice it felt to finally remember everything I had experienced. In hindsight, 20 years zipped by rather quickly, even more so as a child.

Why would I wait 20 years? Wasn't it obvious? The whole legality of it would be much more dangerous if I left while a minor. Furthermore, as a '20' year old in a run-down orphanage barely scraping by with government handouts, they wouldn't be bothered to find the kid who had no living relatives anyway. I...

Heh. Time does weird things to your mind. Look at me, speaking to myself now.

I still... No, I now remember the day that old crone had cursed me to live a thousand lives. Foolish me had even thought it to be a blessing at first. Maybe breaking into the 'haunted house' on a full moon was a bad idea.

My footsteps pounded against the asphalt road, the sidewalk now but a distant memory. As the faint light of dim street lamps faded away, the darkness overwhelmed me. A fear of the darkness, one which I had thought forgotten a long, long time ago. Who would have thought getting betrayed by a man you thought was your best friend, then left to starve to death in a dark cellar as he bricked up the entrance would have been traumatising? Certainly not me.

I traced out the familiar oval shape of the "cats' eye", the glowing glyph radiating in the blanketing darkness. Pointing the very pupil of the eye at my own, I watched as the darkness slowly receded as the glyph dissolved in the air, a skill learned from a magic school so long ago.

I kept on running.

As the soles of my feet burned, the golden locket hanging from my neck only felt more and more heavy. Finally, as I approached a particularly patchy stretch of road, I felt my legs give out from under me.

Laying by the side of the road, head facing the great sandy plains of Arizona, the stars never looked brighter. I flipped over onto my back, so my head could get a better look at the celestial constellations above.

A few lives ago, this wouldn't have been surprising. A few more lives ago, they would have been praised as scions of astral gods beyond us. I know what they are. Burning conglomerations of gases so hot they would burn a man's face off. I would know.

But that life was many years ago now, or maybe so many years ahead of this life that this earth... It wouldn't matter anymore. I clutched the golden locket in my hand, lifting it up infront of my face, the faint reflection staring back at me. It smirked, in the sadistic glee of knowing that it was but a youthful mask on an ancient soul.

I opened the locket, staring into the photograph that sat within. A handsome face sat within, a depiction of a great man who once existed, so long ago. My heartbeat began to calm, no longer beating at my seated ribs. The hum of a distant car's engine reminded me of the present reality, snapping me out of a much too distant memory. Shutting the locket, I ran a finger across the ancient emerald adorning its centre, whilst muttering an ancient elven power word.

My fingers and clothes slowly became invisible, just in time for the car's bright headlights to shine right through me. The car trundled on, its presence diminishing as the engine hum slowly faded away. Now, I realise that looking upon the past would not serve me much longer.

What would I even do here? It's been several thousand years since I've been here, with nothing much changing at all, as if a rock in a rushing river, unchanging and unmoving while life past me by.

Perhaps... Yes... Heh, lets see if that old crone still lives there. With that, I disapperated.

Out of all these lives, I will finally understand revenge.

Maybe it was a blessing after all.

Edit: I need to run some errands so TBC

Edit 2: It's finished, for now :)