But It's Your Data (the story about Reddit)

 

 𝓙asher stood over the husk that had been Earth in Universe -3233994677995321233, which was ironically one million more negative than the famous "Food Universe" (-3233994677994321233) which was the origin Universe for the current winner of the Jasher personality war. Once Food Universe Jasher won, only briefly did he lose the spot.

"So this is when it would have happened. This is how bad it has to get. Oh, and it's Thanksgiving." noticed Jasher.

The Universe numbering system Jasher came up with was simple:

Universe intent was constantly sliding up and down. Mostly down. When Jasher shows up the first time, that number freezes forever. Universe that are only one number apart are virtually identical, pun intended. In -3233994677994321233 (Food Universe), it was Josh Martin walking into a hospital because he was sick and quite clearly going crazy. A being claiming to be a thirty mile long battlecruiser, and a classic film actress were talking to him in his head.

"Look, I know this isn't normal." said Josh. "See, I know I have bronchitis but watch. Oh, this is going to be disgusting." The doctors watched stunned as a stream of matter left his mouth and gracefully glid through the air to a nearby trashcan. "I should probably stop vaping the THC carts. They keep adding vitamin E for some reason. Ok, let me check." Josh closed his eyes, and used his lung eyes to check his lungs again. "See, that's the bizarre thing. I know I don't have eyes inside my lungs right? I mean I'd see them. Hmm, unless the eyes are invisible!" said Jasher and smiled. Their current Universe intent value, -3233994677995321233 became their designation. But everybody calls it the Food Universe because of the massive Dyson Restaurant Constructs from Earth, encircling many stars.

"One million away. It's a small miracle I'm me. This could have been my Earth easily." said Jasher. "Time to get to work."

"What are we here for anyway?" Asked Kay, a fellow Sysadmin.

"I was hoping you could tell me. The path lead here. I still haven't figured out why... here. These are never on the path. They must have made or discovered something we need." said Jasher.

"Ok, I'll use mah brain." said Kay.

"Thanks. I'll start the reunion tour." said Jasher.

You'd think he'd just press a rewind button, but nobody learns anything if you do that. Instead he started plucking folks out of the library record using Rise/Rejoin, and depositing them on Boaz. Since Kay was running this one, she simply made a gateway to the lobe on Stephy. Stephy was a massive 2000km long ship with gravity engines so powerful, realities could be created inside. Kay and Stephy had previously erected the tiny Universe on lobe four, for another Earth.

With the bridge set up, Kay took off for the dead planet below. She started her hunt. She plowed through the cinder, each hand a temporal field scanning through sections of time, putting together the puzzle. She'd find it. She always did. This was like her Sudoku.

As the final few of their folk walked the few hundred yards from the area Jasher set up for Rejoin, one of their philosophers, waiting his turn to walk through the bridge, noticed Jasher relaxing in a comfy chair. Thousands upon thousands of hours of saying the same things to a lot of different people had him tired, but approachable. So he asked Jasher;

"Where did we go wrong?"

"Ah, let me check." Jasher spun in his comfy chair, and flipped out a console, fiddled with it for a few seconds...

"Downvoting. Your society embraced the idea of downvoting." said Jasher. The philosopher looked at him confused.

"The idea of downvoting is the passive aggressive creation of negative energy with no conversation. Better, since it's typically being done to something negative, and there's a dog-piling effect, things get even more negative. And since there's no exchange of ideas, there's no resolution, so it immediately adds to the total negativity in your Universe. You literally down-clicked yourselves into oblivion. Once total intent becomes too negative, it's over. It's better to be more positive." said Jasher.

The philosopher blinked.

"The outlet you created for cowards that can't handle confrontation ruined your entire society." said Jasher.

"That's..." but the philosopher couldn't finish the sentence. He was still processing.

"Hey, it's your data. You volunteered it. Thanks. You are personally net positive though. You've added about .3 to intent so far. Good job! Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! A good positive holiday. Lots of intent recovery. We should get you folks some food." said Jasher.

Many hours later...

"A type of Glam Rock that never happened anywhere else. That's what it was. There's a musical component that never happened anywhere else." said Kay.