The Universe, Replaced

I dreamed once again that the world was about to end . . . but once again not in the usual way. Some fool in the distant past had wished before an all-powerful singularity that the entire universe be transformed into an ever-expanding conglomeration of infinite varieties of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

The entity who had done so loved Cinnamon Toast Crunch above all things, and desired a realm in which he or she had no concerns other than consuming a never-ending supply of the perfect children’s treat. Apprarently they had judged our universe and found it wanting, so everything within was going to be replaced by something infinitely superior — self-replenishing yet deterministic varieties of the lightly-toasted concoction that is impossible not to crave.

There was nothing to be done about it. Large areas of the universe nearby in both space and time had already transformed into amorphously shifting, yet incredibly delicious varieties of the award-winning breakfast cereal. All that was to be done was to sit back and await our utterly inevitable but totally scrumptious end.

Eventually, given the more proactive and forward-looking attitude I have now, I decided I wasn’t just going to sit by and wait for myself and everyone I loved to be turned into small tasty biscuits of comfort food. I convened a great Cinnamon Toast Crunchening Convention to determine the best way to prevent ourselves from being co-opted from a material which is best marinated in a suspension of whole milk.

Scientists came up with desperate plan to fling noble and virtuous heroes back at the anomaly to prevent the Crunch-formation. None ever communicated with us again, much less returned with a success report. So, as I sat before the Mighty Anti-Cinny-Toast Time Computer, I came up with a wild scenario — I would calculate the exact second the Crunchtastic Catastrophe had begun and teleport myself just before it, to prevent it from ever occurring.

Voila! Suddenly, I was at my Packard Bell Desktop Computer at my Grandmother Mabel’s in late 1997. I knew the date and the time were but moments before the Crunch-tastrophe was about to initiate. The Internet had just established itself as the Planet Earth’s most amazing new form of commerce and communication. I wanted to find out if anyone had heard of the disaster, so on a lark I entered into Netscape Navigator: “I wish for the Universe to be replaced with Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

Large text began to repeat itself across my CRT screen. WISH GRANTED WISH GRANTED WISH GRANTED again and again, and quickly my PC began to warp and shift, bending with the impossible space-time distortions required to replace all matter and energy with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. “Oh no!” I thought. “I’ve created the very Cinn-Apocalypse I came here to prevent!”

Bill Gates suddenly burst into my den and shrieked “What the hell have you done! We’ve got to find a way to stop this!” and rushed to my computer and began entering all kinds of insane commands to stop the Ultimate Toasting. The computer only began to ripple and distort even more rapidly and powerfully, and I quickly realized that Bill was not preventing The Cinnamon Toast Crunchening — he hated this reality and was attempting to accelerate it.

“Just like a Bill Gates!” I said “To be so megalomaniacal that he thinks to replace reality!” I moved to punch him in the face and push him away from my ancient, but incredibly significant desktop.

All of sudden vast, powerful, arcane and almost unfathomably diverse cyborgs, androids, shapeshifters, war drones and even aliens began arriving from the distant future to ensure that the Crunchening would occur as it was fated to do. More and more cacos began piling into my room with even more advanced forms of weaponry to stop them. My humble den became packed with some of the ultimate heroes and villains ever to exist, all attempting to determine the future of everything in existence.

Eventually some kind of Time Prism was erected which prevented Time Travel into my zone, giving me some breathing room and a chance to think, but I knew the unstoppable resources of all the future sentient races of this Dimension would find a way in eventually.

All the other Bill Gates and cacophonies were dead, leaving only me, the original, to figure out what to do with my Desktop which had now already been replaced with Mankind’s Greatest Creation. As I started deeply into the core of the singularity, wondering how in hell exactly I was supposed to bring Fate to heel, I woke up.