Fenik sat at his desk, monitoring the tree through the window. On the desk’s surface, they had a monitor scrolling through thousands of files of info, two joysticks, and a few button panels—a straightforward setup for the importance of their job.
But it works for them.
There was a knock at their door.
“come in!” fenik said, pressing a button on their panel. The heavy metal door slid open, and Ferna walked in.
“What can I do for you?” Fenik asked, already dreading the answer. Ferna was their manager, who wanted perfect records and no errors. The entire department swore they had never operated a Mandela before.
“Hi Fenik, your reports just crossed my desk, and I have a few questions for you,” Ferna asked.
“hit me, boss,” Fenik responded, glancing back at their monitor to ensure there were no issues with the branches.
“Ok, first off, reports from Earth 4-K89-b state that a few movies have stopped existing after your combination,” Ferna said.
“Movies, boss?” Fenik said.
“Popular Movies, Nostalgic ones at that, an alien movie staring one of their most famous baseball stars, a horror movie that had kicked off a famous actress’ career, movies like that. Gone. Care to explain?” Ferna responded.
“If I remember right, branches 89-a, b, and c were all on a collision course, and I only had time to divert one of them.”
“And you chose to collide b and a? C had the same movies as b; doesn’t that info appear in your file?”
“yes, boss, but in c, the president of Kerraria was assassinated, delaying the start of the Kerarian-Neoian war by four years. I put major political events over a few movies, so I diverted a” Fenik responded.
“The job of the Mandelas is to prevent collisions between branches, and it’s ridiculous that you couldn’t divert them both.”
“If I may, the job of the Mandelas is to MINIMIZE the discrepancies within branches after collisions. We must carefully decide which collision would cause the largest discrepancy and divert that one, even if smaller collisions cause smaller discrepancies.” Fenik said they had explained this to Ferna many times before, but they couldn’t quite grasp the concept.
“The Pruners should be removing the chance for discrepancies,” Ferna responded.
“No, the Pruners take out dead branches. Filse cut a nuclear war branch, a deadly pandemic branch, and a meteor branch off today. If they cut living branches due to discrepancies, we would be flying dangerously close to a “golden timeline.” Fenik said.
Ferna turned red. They hated it when the workers they thought were below them told them off like that.
“I know better than anyone how this operation is run,” Ferna said.
“You don’t, because you just suggested that movies were more important than political assassinations and that the pruners should destroy branches with political assassinations because they’re “too large” of a discrepancy,” Fenik said. They were riding the high of telling Ferna off.
“If you’re so smart, you run the place.” Ferna snapped.
“I wish I could,” Fenik responded. Ferna huffed and stormed away.
“I’m going to regret that,” Fenik muttered as they returned to their desk. They glanced at their monitor to see if any branches were nearing each other.
Branch 379-V and X have entered within two branches of each other
“let’s see here,” Fenik muttered. Selecting the two branches, he looked at the monitor.
Three Discrepancies discovered.
– Pop Culture
– Popular Children’s series Titles
Bernstein vs Bernstain
Loony Tunes vs Loony Toons
Fenik sighed. Reaching out, they tapped a few buttons and grabbed the joysticks on their desk. The monitor flickered and changed into the image of Branch 379-V as it approached 379-X. Wiggling the joysticks, Fenik saw the branch move in conjunction with their movements.
They were about to move the branches away from each other when a thought struck them. No matter what they did, Ferna would be in their office to complain next week anyway.
“Might as well give them something to complain about,” Fenik muttered.
Gripping his joysticks, he steered the branches into each other.
“I’m sure nobody would even notice the discrepancies besides Ferna.”
Will Fall Writings 