“You’re gonna embrace your Destiny,” Joe Biden tells me, looking over me as I sit, strapped into my chair. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I cannot do anything to shake it off. “And you’re gonna love it, I think.”

“You’re... You’re asking so much of me,” I say.

“I see that spark in you, kid.”

“The multiverse? You wish to cross through to other worlds? It’s simply impossible. Only The Goddess can do such a thing.”

“I doubt that. We’ve made so much progress already with the Destiny Deck System, in just a couple months. This is the new space race, and the other world powers don’t even know about it yet! Ain’t that great?”

“Hmmm... Reverse engineering a Sorting Scepter is one thing, but traveling to a completely new world? I just cannot fathom it.”

Joe Biden laughs. “Don’t have to fathom it. It’s already real.” He lets go of my shoulder and begins to pace around me. “I’ll declassify you some important information, just as a gift between leaders. We had a very brief encounter with a world called ‘Efas’ a few years back, and as far as my boys could tell me, it doesn’t have anything to do with your Goddess lady. We have a lot of data from that event, but not enough to really do anything with. What we need is just that little extra spark to build a portal and travel through to the other side. Wherever that leads us.”

“But why?”

“Why not?”

“Some worlds were not meant to cross,” I say. “Some barriers were not meant to be broken.”

“We need this, we Earthlings. And I’m gonna include you in that since you live here. Earth’s going to shit, and we got just a few years before global warming sends half the world population into chaos. America’s got to get to carbon neutrality by 2035, but guess what’s wrong?”

“I could not say.”

“Congress! The damn Senate’s been holding everything up for about four years now, and we can’t even get a single climate bill passed. And now it’s election season, so I’ve got to get some big progress in the next month or two, or I’m dead in the water come November. The Republicans had their big contested convention and named that zero IQ idiot Greene as the nominee, so if I don’t win, we’ve got real big problems.”

“So it’s all politics,” I say. “That’s what it has always been.”

“Of course. Everything’s politics. We need to save the Earth, and the only way I can do it myself is to open up for business in new worlds. Maybe put all our factories on Mystix, then ship everything to Earth. We can outsource all our cattle to Candy Land or whatever and finally all the cow burps will stop killing the ozone layer. We’re in the market for resources and land, and the multiverse has both of those in spades.”

“You... You’re going to invade the multiverse for its resources?”

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

“By The Goddess’s name... How did you even come up with such a devious plan?”

Biden laughs. “I’ve known about the system and all that for a real long time. You sure aren’t the first one I’ve met, that’s for sure. Way back in the day, I knew a man from Mystix. Name was Corn Pop. Then a few decades later, I got to peak behind that pink hair on one young man’s head the day he was adopted.”

“Another North Spiran...”

“Yep. And now he’s my Transportation Secretary. Hey, Mayor Pete, why don’t you come out and greet your cousin or whatever?”

A man with a pale complexion and a thin beard steps into the room, but stays behind the threshold where the glass barrier once was. Mayor Pete, they call him.

He does not speak, only smiles. His eyes are blue and his hair is dark brown, but it’s obvious to anyone in the know that he is of North Spiran origins. However, he does not seem to have any powers; his aura is so small I can barely sense it.

“Found this kid as a baby,” Joe Biden says, “and gave him to a couple in Indiana. They raised him right, but I made sure he got the best. Because now he’s one of the brightest minds in America, and he’s got a grand old plan to return to his homeland.”

“And so, based on this man’s words... You’re going to invade the multiverse.”

Biden shakes his head. “We’re going to invade the multiverse,” he says, emphasizing the word “we.”

“I... I see.”

“What do you think you can do to help? I’d like to hear some ideas.”

First, the Sorting Scepters were replicated. Now, the entire multiverse is at stake. What in The Goddess’s name can I even do?