Essence ofSHIFTing

By drinking this essence, shining with infinite colors, you unlock the ability to SHIFT (Zero Escape).

• To SHIFT is to transfer your mind to an alternate reality, taking over the body of your local equivalent. Ordinarily this would be a swap, so that your new body’s previous owner ends up in the body you just left behind, but you may choose to fuse with the new body’s consciousness if you so please.

• To begin with, you’ll only be able to do this in fatally dangerous situations. You are about to be hit by a car, someone is about to shoot you, you are trapped in a burning building, etc. With training and usage, however, you will begin to become capable of actively SHIFTing without needing fatal situations to trigger it.

• To begin with, your destination will be random, though always placing you in a close analogue where someone made a different decision or was just a little bit less confident. Though stranger and more fantastical worlds, such as ones where some people have different genders or prominent historical events were different, are also reachable. If you travel to the very edge of possibility, perhaps more supernatural worlds can be found.

• With time and training, you can begin to choose your destinations, either by broad categories and criteria or by knowing exactly where you want to go.

• You will always SHIFT in a situation where you would have otherwise died, regardless of whether or not you chose to. Though you may choose not to SHIFT upon dying if you would like to for whatever reason.

• With time and training SHIFTing can be done forwards and backwards through time, as well as across it, so you may leave a reality and then re-enter it or others at an earlier point.

• With time and training, you can learn how to SHIFT other people along with you, which will deposit them in their local equivalent the same as you. This will also awaken them to the ability to SHIFT, if you so choose. Unlike normal, you will always be aware of where these people are, such that you can never lose them in the infinite span of the multiverse.

• One day, after a lot of experience with SHIFTing, you might learn to SHIFT half-way, leaving you outside of reality and capable of looking in, observing events and other universes through the perspective of your other selves. With even more training, it might even be possible to observe the viewpoints of other people, perhaps even SHIFT into their bodies instead of one of your alternates.