First Book; Tap

Chapter 1?
    What if someone told you that everything you had ever imagined, existed in another universe? What if that someone were to write a book about himself, and this other him, let’s call him David, were to develop the ability to travel between dimensions, across other planes of existence? David, the original, might have had no idea of the existence of such a grand, complex scheme, had he not received a visit from his other self.
David Chavez was twenty years old, a sophomore in college, athletic, six feet tall, with brown hair and blue eyes. He had a habit of looking away from people when he talked, he interrupted them on occasion, but only from lack of insight, and hardly ever for the sake of being rude. David was a bit of an enigma, his moods bouncing up and down from one day to the next, and the several close friends he had, he appreciated and cherished. Despite having attended college for a full year, he had no idea what to do with his life. Sure, he had interests, passions, hobbies, and limited experience, but whenever someone asked him what his plans were for the future, he awkwardly tripped, stumbled, and evaded the topic, choosing instead to talk about a book he was working on.
“Well,” he said, “I’m just trying to get my core credits, and explore my options. In the mean time, I have my hobbies, and my novel.”
“What are your hobbies,” asked Megan, a girl he was interested in, also a sophomore, with neck-length black hair, a gracefully ovalled face, and brown eyes.
“Well,” he said as he opened the door for her, leading out of Jefferson Hall, one of many buildings on campus dedicated to university classes, “I like to run, I like to read, and I like to make swords.”
Her head twisted to the side, her eyebrow quirked, “What? Make swords?”
“Yep.” They were walking outside now, along the road on the sidewalk, heading into town.
“So, how do you make a sword?” The sky darkened as the sun went behind a cloud; David wondered if it would rain today.
“It depends how good I want it to be, and what it’s for. If it’s for purely aesthetic purposes, I just go buy the metal, shape it, make a handle for it, and then sharpen it.” Their footsteps were synchronized, making it easy for him to keep pace, and use his hands to accompany his words. Megan looked on, paying close attention, her eyes only darting away to track her feet.
“If I want to make a real sword, I usually use scrap or other metal, melt it, cast it, and work it in the forge until it’s strong and shaped like a sword. The rest is the same as what I first said, only it takes a lot longer because I put more time into it.” It was early in the morning, so traffic was sparse; they crossed the road at an intersection, passing red-brick buildings and store windows. Megan had mentioned she was on her way to get breakfast; David had already eaten breakfast about an hour ago, but he was somehow hungry again.
“Wow,” she said, opening the door for him to corner cafe, nestled in between the video game shop and the insurance agency, all three window sets sporting latex letters and numbers, eye-catching colors and shapes accompanying them on the doors. It was an average-sized cafe for a small college town, with several high tables, a few booths, and half a dozen regular-height tables. The only people there besides them were the two employees behind the counters of pastries and cakes, surrounded by trays and machines and coffee brewers, and a single, slender elderly man with today’s newspaper, dressed in a brown suede vest, white dress pants, and dark leather shoes. After they ordered at the counter, David and Megan sat at a high table by the large front window, from which David could now see that the grey clouds had been blown out, and replaced by dark ones; he couldn’t remember if he had closed his apartment windows this morning before he left. He was just around the corner, above one of the many businesses in this part of town, and on the second floor the wind sometimes would blow strong enough to force rain into any open crack.
Megan, after briefly checking her phone while David stared out the window, brought him back with, “So, is your book about making swords too? You seem really passionate about it, I bet it’s a good book.”
“Actually, it’s about something even better,” he said with a slight smile; he always appreciated when someone asked him about the book; he never liked bringing it up on his own, he always felt like if he forced it into the conversation, whoever he was talking to may lose interest.
    “What if I told you that everything you have ever imagined, existed in another universe? Who’s your favorite superhero?” He pause to allow the enormity of the first sentence to sink in; he could tell how well someone understood him, sometimes, by how much they blinked. If they blinked too much, the idea was just bouncing around, and couldn’t get past the front of their brain into the thinking parts. If they just stared at him, they might as well not have heard it. He was glad that Megan had done neither.
    Megan refocused her eyes on David, having returned to Earth with an answer to his question, and a clear understanding of what he had said: “Spider-man”
    “Alright, imagine if Spider-man could travel from his dimension, to our dimension. What do you think would happen?”
    “Well,” she began, but was interrupted by a cafe employee who was delivering their orders; David had ordered a breakfast sandwich with egg and cheese on a bagel, and she had ordered a Mocha Latte(no sugar, extra whipped cream) and a whole wheat chocolate chip muffin. The smell of chocolate brought her mind back to how hungry she was; she took a bite, chewed most of it, and through what was left in her mouth, tucked into her cheek, said, “That depends on how, or why he would want to do that. I mean, he’s already in his universe, no need to come to ours.”
    David swallowed the bite he had been consuming; “Ok, let’s say his girlfriend Mary Jane was kidnapped by a villain who happens to be able to travel between universes.”
    As David was taking another bite, Megan said, “But how would they even get to our universe? I get why, but I read in an online science article that the amount of energy needed for something to step outside of this plane of reality is more than what is within this universe.” She casually took a sip of her latte, nonchalantly glancing out at the clouds.
    David had stopped chewing halfway through the last sentence; he had never heard someone who looked so good sound so smart. “Ok, first, kudos on letting your inner nerd out for a bit, I like it. Second, that is true; in theory. But theories like that never take into account what is trying to get from one plane to the other.” The old man walked by, paper in one hand, and an umbrella in the other. David heard the sound of the rain as it began hitting the shop glass, and as the old man opened the door to leave, in wafted the distinct smell of petrichor, mixing with the sugar, wheat, and other breakfast foods in the store. David set down his sandwich--he was too intrigued to be hungry-- and once again started using his hands to illustrate his words, flowing them from one form to the next.
    “Do you know what dark matter is?,” he asked, although he supposed that she did.
    “It’s an antiparticle, along with antimatter and negative matter. It’s theorised that that for every antiparticle, an equilibrium is made with a regular particle, and vice versa.” Her latte was half gone, same as her muffin, and she was now, seemingly absentmindedly, using her straw to stir her drink.
    “Exactly. What if humans evolved a cellular structure that could manipulate these particles?” David had his elbows on the table as he leaned forward, hands clasped together in unison, shaking up and down with every important adjective and verb. She was sitting upright, one hand on the table around her latte, the other arm resting on the first, paralleled.
    “But they can’t. How can your answer to the impossible be something else impossible?” Her eyebrows were slightly scrunched, her head tilted to the side; her voice was almost demanding. David smiled; the best question to answer was always one that didn’t take into account the whole picture. The rain was falling harder now, the pitter patter of each drop forcefully striking the window beside them. The white noise was like a curtain to David, a curtain that he was about to pull back and reveal the big trick.
    “The answer, is that it is impossible; in this universe. If we accept the theory of Fictional Realism, which is what I was first talking about, we accept that there is a universe where humans, at least one, has this ability.” David sat back in his seat and crossed his arms.
    Megan was now the one with her elbows on the table, leaning forward; “Ok, that’s part of an answer,” she said, and her gaze moved just above Davids head. “But what about actually going from one universe to the other? If I imagine Spider-man coming into the cafe sweeping me off my feet, and web-slinging all the way to New York, why hasn’t it happened yet?” She leaned back again, with her arms crossed, her eyebrows raised expectantly.
    It was time to hit it home.
“Traveling across the universes is like traversing a river system; the great, powerful source river flows unstoppably, along with the subsequently smaller riverlets, and no matter how hard you try, you can never break upriver, into the current, back to the source.”
She took another bite of her muffin; all the technicalities were overpowering.
“So the only reason Spider-man isn’t here now is because we’re the source river? How do you know?” Her muffin was almost gone, there were some crumbs in the corner of her lip. David was hungry again, so he took a bite, chewing thoughtfully.
“I guess I don’t. But even if we are the source, there’s still a way to get to us. It’s true that I said it’s impossible to go against the powerful current of the source. But, if you destroy an entire riverlet, damming it, choking it dry, you might be able to climb through into the temporary gap left by the absence of the flow.” David finished his sandwich, savoring the spices of the sausage and the doughy sweetness on the bagel.
Megan was scrunching up her muffin wrapper into the palm of her hand, and taking the last sip of her latte, and she asked, with a playful half-smile,
“So is your book about Spider-man coming into a cafe in search of Mary Jane?”
David smiled back, and he felt his ears and cheeks burn; “Actually, it’s about someone that falls in love, but she gets kidnapped by a universe-traversing villain. In the end, there’s a twist, and his life is in pieces.” He turned his head to look outside; it had stopped raining, and he wondered if the rain had gotten in a window after all.
“And?” She asks as she stares at him, beginning to lean forward again.
“And what?” David is brought back again from the window.
“You can’t end a book with your main character’s plot unresolved. Is that really it”
“No actually, it’s not done yet.” He looked down at the foil wrapper his sandwich had occupied, specks of cheese and crumb sticking to the inside.
“I can’t seem to decide how to end it. Everything seems wrong.”
Megan paused for a moment, and then said, “Maybe you’re missing something, maybe there’s a point in your book that will help you end it.”
David was silent for a few moments, staring at the wrapper, lost in thought. Megan took her phone out of her pocket to check the time; she turned her attention back to David to find him staring at her. He had a stupid crazy smile on his face, and he opened his mouth and said, “Yes! Thank you so much!”
He excitedly grabbed one of her hands in both of his, squeezed lightly, and was up and to the door before she could open her mouth to inquire. He paused at the door, as if he had hit a wall, turned around and said, “It was really nice to meet you, thanks for the help.” He propelled himself through and out the door, leaving Megan confused.