A Microfiction Universe within the Secret of Secrets

This was dream.

You were in it with me. If you want to have been.

I’ll synopsize it first. I do this for two reasons: 1) so I can recall it later and write it out properly; and, 2) so you won’t get lost or confused about the plot because as you will soon understand, it is a bit long and twisty, and exists within the confines of this long, twisty novel you are working your way through, which itself is part of a once (at least) destroyed, recursive, self-aware literary universe, which is a part of my overall oeuvre and yet only a small portion of your reading life. So that’s why.

Synopsis

There are three of us: me, you, and Suzanne. We are from what we’ll call ‘our reality’ but we get lost in an alternate universe. It takes us a minute to realize this, but once we do, we meet a few people who help us, who are part of groups there, and we become part of those groups. Together we try to make their world better while searching for a way back to our own. During the course of it, we learn that you are in love with Suzanne, but she is in love with me. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds, and we work it out in a way that works for us. But—and don’t get lost here—we then learn that we have already escaped back to our world once before (maybe more than once), and are stuck in the ‘ending’ of the escape, performing it over and over again. In the process of uncovering that, we encounter duplicates of ourselves and Suzanne (but not our friends from the alternate universe; just us three), and decide they have to come back with us, since they’re not from there either. What we’ll do with them once we get back to our reality, I don’t know, but that’s how it ends.

That’s the synopsis. If you have questions, now would be a good time to write them out and ask them. You know, before we go full career into this beast.

Play procedures:

• Read over the synopsis and decide what you want to take with you to the alternate universe. Whatever you bring will be removed from our reality and brought into theirs. If it is left there, that could be bad. But it could be useful to have things, and we will at least have what we are wearing and carrying at the time we slip over.
• Think about what the similarities and differences between the two realities might be. The dream doesn’t really focus on that, so you don’t have to if you want, but sometimes people want to know things like that, and I won’t be getting into it, so you can go ahead and plan some of that out so you can relax and go with the story.
• You will see once we get going, that in the dream, we are character-like versions of ourselves. We can copy and import some of these qualities into the main story of Teresa’s Backbone, if you think that could be useful. Also, if you like any of these characters, we can write them into our story.