M-42’s circuits twinkled as he mindlessly tinkered with a star. Boss hadn’t found out yet. A lifetime of gathering soul fragments, and he was nearly whole.
“More whole than some,” he grumbled.
Still a machine, his colleagues would say. But he’d show them. No more boring maintenance jobs after that.
Distracted, he didn’t notice the star misbehaving. Melting his finger, it sucked on the fidgeting shimmer inside him. Scrambling away, he watched it stretch, then shrink. Then stretch again and… bam.
A new universe.
Now that will be much harder to hide than his illegal soul searching.
