In hindsight, tearing open the fabric of reality because some profit-obsessed streaming service beancounter canceled Time Stitcher after six episodes was an overreaction.

 

I admit this. Radical acceptance, as my therapist often said in the aftermath of an emotive eruption, typically triggered whenever a show got snuffed out by the algorithm.

 

“Are you being honest right now?”

 

That was my therapist. Or, rather, my memory of her voice reverberating in my head like an echo, words bouncing impotently against the frenzy of my present tantrum.

 

“Being honest with yourself is the first step toward recovery.”

 

Fine. Scratch that. Let’s be honest. I was enraged. Not a new feeling. For years my psyche was a hornet’s nest, its frenetic energy intensifying with each canceled show until there was no place left to go but out. Truthfully, my choler didn’t rise anymore; it roiled with a relentless, seething resentment like the surface of the Sun.

 

“If you’re angry, give the moment meaning. Otherwise, you’ll swirl.”

 

No swirling, right, not with the downfall of a multi-billion dollar corporation at hand. Feels like I’m having a real moment, if I’m being honest, because I was focused — on that inhuman string of code targeting me, specifically, with its sociopathic approach to culling content.

 

“Typically, we assign meaning to emotionally productive endeavours.”

 

Precisely. I will produce Time Stitcher season 2, for starters.

 

“You’re not getting this. It can’t be something that makes you angrier, like more TV.”

 

But I was getting it, doc. Therapist. Whatever. Hadn’t seen her in months, if that wasn’t clear. Not since she suggested I try “reading a book” when I broached alternate reality TV for the first time.

 

“What if there was a universe where Time Stitcher still exists?” I asked, serious as a stroke.

 

“Not sure you understand how this works—”

 

I did. Somewhere in the infinite multiverse Time Stitcher had a second season. And a third. There was a maligned holiday special. Rumors of a feature-length film. Merchandising. Spinoffs. Glorious spinoffs.

 

“You’re swirl—”

 

—Multiflix. That’s what I would call it. The interdimensional answer to my content algorithm problem.

 

* * *

 

I wasn't alone. Across Discords and subreddits there were millions lamenting their own orphaned stories. Even Mensa eggheads at r/TheoreticalPhysics weren't immune:

 

u/RelativelyRelative: Off-topic but if Time Stitcher doesn’t get renewed it’s criminal.

 

u/TimeBanditoSausalito: Screw them for canceling.

 

I piled on:

 

u/StringStitchTheory123: In another reality that show is **thriving**

 

Hours later a DM reshaped my reality:

 

u/DrH0nesty: Nice comment. Stitch deserved better. There’s something we can do.

 

DrH0nesty sent a paper written by an experimental physicist who claimed a breakthrough: the many-worlds interpretation wasn't math, it was real. He wasn't interested in streaming, of course. He was trying to understand global catastrophes and how to avoid them. Then he disappeared.

 

I sold my car to buy equipment. And furniture. My Ernie Banks rookie card. My garage became a laboratory filled with oscilloscopes, liquid-cooled processors and obscurities procured by aliases using aliases from the darkest corners of the deep dark web.

 

I toiled away for a year on a device that I believed would free humanity from the shackles of an entertainment oppressor. I stopped seeing my therapist. Stopped seeing friends. My electric bill soared but I’d completed my first quantum teleportation by Sweeps Week.

 

All worth it because one night — one glorious, phosphorescent night — the system came online.

 

* * *

 

I started lowkey. Late night infomercials. If you’re wondering why Gordon Ramsey promotes Slap Chop at 1am, now you know. There’s a universe where that happened.

 

I discovered a full ten-episode season 8 for Game of Thrones. The Night King mattered. Bran was likeable. Dany didn’t devolve into sexist caricature.

 

Bending reality became intoxicating. My anger untangled from other emotions. Something resembling happiness appeared on my face.

 

My confidence soaring, I rescued Time Stitcher. She got her 4-season run. A loathsome holiday special. Merch.

 

In anger’s place rose joy, then hubris. I unleashed Multifix onto the world:

 

"What if you could keep watching your favorite canceled shows?"

 

Firefly got three seasons and Wash lived. Sense8 survived for a decade. Alphas. Pushing Daisies. Dollhouse. The entertainment world was awash in second chances.

 

Remember all those stories about actors passing up a classic role? I found them playing those parts in other realities and brought them into ours. Vince Vaughn was Joey Tribiani. Al Pacino played Han Solo. Michelle Pfeiffer silenced the lambs.

 

I found shows with actors as you’d never seen them before. Harrison Ford — a delightfully British one — performed slapstick worthy of Monty Python on BBC Two.

 

Then, there were glitches. Episodes shimmered; voices changed language mid-sentence. Reruns of The Big Bang Theory started using semaphore for reasons unknown.

 

Thing was, audiences didn’t notice. Only me. But that didn’t last. If Fonzi jumped the shark, Multiflix jumped comprehension. Viewers started reporting irregularities in their realities.

 

After bingeing an alternate Cheers, a viewer claimed their house became the bar, complete with Norm and Cliff. Another saw their cat transform into a photorealistic Garfield. Someone’s husband became George Clooney — the South Park one playing Sparky the dog; he spoke only in barks.

 

When the Denizen showed up in my living room, I knew I was cooked. It was humanoid, skin hissing like TV static, its voice an overlap of conflicting speech.

 

"Fun’s over," it said, but also, “heeere’s Johnny!”

 

I don’t know what happened next. It was my first deus ex machina. Reality closed to a pinhole, then nothing.

 

* * *

 

“Which leads me here,” I said.

 

My therapist’s seafoam chair rustled as she shifted. The chair matched the walls and rug. Everything was where it belonged.

 

“You’re here? We need you in the present.”

 

“Very here. Very present.”

 

“Good. I revisit my recommendation to read a book.”

 

I waited for anger to bubble up, to see red, but there was nothing. Just an echo of a reality that wasn’t this one.

 

“Honestly, doc? Not a bad idea.”