The Ripper
Apr 10, 2026 · 6 min read
The monitor suddenly bvvv’d on, and baptized the dark atrium in green light.
It had interrupted his nightly watering.
The sound, so alien and exciting,
led him to drop his copper watering can,
wetting his socks,
and causing his white cat Jinkers to flee for cover.
It didn’t matter. He hustled to the desk, tripping over the many wires that kept The Ripper alive.
“Finally, a signal,” he exclaimed, slapping the timer that had counted the time since the machine had turned on.
Five hundred, seventy-one days. His brother had been lost to the void for a year and a half.
Dr. Rictor Shad had invented a dimension ripper, a cosmic newsboy, and it had finally grabbed its first headline.
“Dated!
Wonderful!
Oh and today!
It’s a headline from today!
Jinkers!
You bitch!
Come back!
It’s time to work.”
Jinkers preened, now realizing his mild retreat was unnecessary.
Luckily no one saw him.
“Published Jan 14, 2026–
A different way of writing it.
Not much different, though.
Maybe things aren’t too bad for Seth...”
The monitor displayed the decoded news article in a green text that revealed, letter by letter, the happenings of a parallel universe.
“God Admits Imitation Crab Tastes Just As Good.”
He paused and stared as the article went on to state an “All Knowing Creator of the Universe” had claimed he wouldn’t have bothered inventing the crab if he had known how easy it would be to make a substitute.
“Humans still have a long way to go when it came to imitation cheese” it had said.
He ran his hand through wild-grey streaked hair.
A God?
Active?
To prevent a doctor-predicted stroke, he tried to control his breathing.
“WHAT NOW,” he’d spat foam onto the screen in question form.
“What in the name of all logic is ‘imitation crab’?”
Perhaps there had been a mass extinction?
They longed for the taste of a lost species.
This was the first of his notes.
Raving as he wrote, he speculated widely on what he transcribed.
Throwing the plate of fact at the wall, not caring that most ended up on the floor.
That was the help’s problem, that is what he paid them for.
The news organization was listed at the end of the report.
“Why would anyone name their newspaper ‘The Onion’? Is it about cooking?”
He panted over this nonsense.
Jinkers didn’t care.
“Come over here cat! Witness alt history and its ridiculousness.”
She brazenly nibbled a low hanging pothos.
Betrayed.
“Apparently God speaks to his people in this timeline. Imagine a direct line to a deity? How exciting.
“What to ask? Our universe isn’t so lucky to have an intelligent design.”
The text began to erase as he scratched out his third mistake, and he finished by memory in a huff.
“I didn’t think to add a way to save.
I’m so stupid!
Now I’m lashed to this machine.
I can’t miss the next transmission.
It might be the key.
This is my only chance to make things right…”
But, of course.
A bird in the hand, is worth a witch in the well…
and he missed most of the next transmission,
absentmindedly reading the article
before beginning to write the words down.
The violently scribbled notes headlined:
“Man Donates Body To Culinary Science”
“Disgusting.”
It chronicled the custom of donating one's empty vessel to higher education.
“Fascinating,
to openly practice cannibalism
and frame it as morality.”
He felt a brush against his leg.
“Don’t worry Jinkers, I don’t eat cat anymore.”
She thumped away.
Shad thought back to the prototype Ripper, and the few bits it had uncovered.
Same universe? Famines and eating babies—never the answer. At least in the future they were able to address their more savage nature slightly.
No matter how modestly it’s proposed, eating another person is horrifying.
“Though I doubt you think so, do you Jinkers? You wouldn’t wait till I was cold.
…
Don’t wink at me either.”
After two days, the feed became so steady he had to recruit his nephew, Chet, to help.
“Everything matters! I need every word.
These riddles,
the strange use of violence,
I’m having a hard time picturing anything.”
Unsurprising to new eyes, Chet had long known his uncle’s intentions.
He was just happy to be making a little extra weed money.
It was awesome, getting stoned and writing wild fantasies to slip between transmissions as he logged them.
And to spend time with his uncle.
His aunt had insisted someone check on him.
It’s not like they were real.
Some of these were even old.
Chet loved good satire.
Might as well add to it.
His favorite- “Flaming Squirrel Cures Rest Home Boredom.”
It was derivative for the form, but Chet doubted the good doctor read for style.
His Uncle asked him:
“What’s a bidet? Is it like a toilet?
Can it really shoot a hole through a man’s chest?”
The young man didn’t know, and that drove his Uncle mad.
“Then what are you doing here? Can you be something useful!”
No time to argue…
“Bullshit Newborn Not Even Christ.”
Seems strange to place so much hatred on a new life.
Is Christ a person? Why do they need them so badly?
“Outstanding… we need to know more.
Ring that bell whenever you log that name.
Alert me to that key word.”
The next day washed the doctor’s house down the river.
Now it was as if the faucet had opened and brown water began to flood their bathroom.
Perhaps their God had found the rip.
DING DING DING. “Hey, yo, doc!”
“Returning Jesus Christ Downed by U.S. Missile Defense”
His only thoughts lay with Seth, lost in the rip.
Now,
They began to notice different acronyms claiming authorship,
mixed in with the vegetable based articles from earlier.
Three letters that were never explained,
“A’s B’s and N’s,
random in their arrangement,
signaled the source that had previously digested this information.
When man and god meet, the result is an unhealthy universe.
These people live in a place where authority shoots through windshields at innocent mothers—
and do nothing…
They view their salvation as an attack.
Where did this brutality evolve from?
None of them seemed to tell the same story either.
Why?
Do facts act differently in this universe?
Jinkers had not seen the mad doctor in days.
He had fast forgotten the term “food” in his quest for the truth.
And then, after a week the machine stopped…
Thousands of pages littered the floor of their atrium–
With each open window,
a threat of disorganization.
For Shad and his nephew, there had been no leaving for the week they had broadcast.
They wrote on anything that would take ink.
Except on Jinkers.
She had escaped through the window
and decided to live in the main house again
with Mrs. Shad
and the boyfriend who delivered supplies.
A knock at the door.
“Thank you Russel, tell my wife I love her.”
“Of course,” he replied. “Don’t worry, she’s satisfied.”
“Good enough…”
Dr. Shad fired Chet without a moment's pause,
useless now that his hand had gnarled from writing.
Better the apprentice take damage
than the next prize winning scientist.
Besides, it was his brain
that needed to put this puzzle together.
It was his destiny.
It was his brain that had given birth to the machine that had torn Seth apart.
No one would gaslight him.
He remembered his brother,
even if no one else did.
Ripper 1 hadn’t torn everything from this reality, just his brother.
He felt closer than ever. Now the real search could begin.
There was no way of knowing where he was.
Was it possible to find an ant in a needle stack?
Not this way. Not with so many questions.
Not with so little time.
On a clean sheet of paper, the mad doc wrote:
“RIPPER 3 must have a video feed.”