Multiverse of Me!

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once – Meet the Alternate Universe Versions of Me

A bit of fun for the New Year! – Across multiple universes, there are multiple versions of me. Different lives, different environments, different contexts, but is there a common thread that unifies such diversity? 

None of these are me, all of them are me. Which are the ones you’d want to know more about? Maybe even hear more of their stories? Meet them below:

Hunter Shahzad: In a universe where technology is 50 years ahead of ours, a food shortage meant scientists genetically enhanced cattle. Unfortunately, a mutation bred monsters that now need to be hunted and culled. This Shahzad is a hunter, armed with visual and sensory augmentation that gives him the ‘sixth sense’ needed to take on the miscreations on equal footing. 

Model Shahzad: The vanity was strong in this Shahzad. So he became a model. He has mastered both Blue Steel and Magnum, and is working on perfecting The Odyssey. However, his perfection has one fatal flaw. He’s a coward. Scared of just about anything, he once totalled a car when a spider swung down from the rear-view mirror. Shrieking in horror, he simply opened the door and got out. He bore some bruises and scratches, but at least his face was untouched!

Swindler Shahzad: This pimped Shahzad’s universe is stuck in the 70s, and survives in the crime world on his wits and guile alone. The police think he works for the mafia, the mafia suspect he’s working with the police. They’re both right, and they’re both wrong. Question is how long can he avoid the handcuffs on his wrists, or a bullet in the back of the head. And what’s his real motivation?

Don Shahzad: This Shahzad is a boss. He takes a hard line on dissention, his clemency is conditional, and he hungers like a wolf for greater conquests. But he’s a dinosaur from a dying era. His days are numbered, and he knows it. Radical change and stepping down could mean survival and a legacy intact. Stubbornness will mean a lonely corpse in a ditch. 

Mercenary Shahzad: This one takes care of whatever needs taking care of. Call on him when there’s no one left to call and things just got very messy. Beware though, he suffers no fools and tolerates no BS and there’s usually a trail of death and destruction left in his wake. 

Retreat Shahzad: The motivational and mental health guru, this Shahzad runs a retreat for those burnt out by the rat-race. “This is ‘you’ time” he tells people. Here you eat well, sleep well, think well. And die well. When program participants start keeling over, and with both his retreat and personal reputation at risk, the sworn pacifist has to draw on the skills of a surprising previous life to stop the killings. 

Time Lord Shahzad: Newly regenerated, this Shahzad, faces a mysterious new threat. The disorientated master of time and space must keep his head, while those around him lose theirs as a chemical attack removes inhibitions and triggers baser instincts in those afflicted. Suddenly shorn of the constraints of a PC and woke society, people reveal their true thoughts. And finding himself on the receiving end of much abuse, he ponders whether he actually wants to save the people, or should he just find his travelling box, and leave?

Political Leader Shahzad: In South Asia a new leader emerges. He claws and climbs his way up the slimy and slithery political ladder, playing the games that need to played, paying the dues that need to be paid. Until one day he makes it. Sitting in the top chair, he realises it’s finally time to flip the switch and turn the establishment on its head. Can real change come from power, or is power just a puppet in the hands of the nefarious? This Shahzad is about to find out. 

Revenge Shahzad: He’s been on a rampage of revenge for so long, he’s forgotten what he originally wanted revenge for. Now it’s become a habit so he avenges anyone and everyone that wants it. Just as he’s finally beginning to run out of bloodlust the past re-emerges and reignites his need for retribution. 

Tech Shahzad: A younger version of Shahzad, this super-brained prodigy thrives on fast food and fast bytes. He sets out to reprogramme the world, but it’s a world he doesn’t yet know enough about. Will his relentless good intentions provide just the tech-tonic change a toxic society needs, or will his naivety and lack of real-world savvy instead unleash the end of days?

Space Captain Shahzad: When Earth receives an invitation from a distant world which includes instructions on how to get there, this Shahzad is selected to lead the mission to make first contact. Leading a team of the best of the best, the Captain fights back self-doubt and imposter syndrome as the Hope of Humanity boldly goes where no one has gone before. 

Tech Entrepreneur Shahzad: Software made him a billionaire and a tech superstar. Now he’s moving into hardware, and about to launch a new smart phone. A tragedy at one of his development labs alerts him to the possibility of sabotage from within. But who is it, and what are they trying to do? With huge investments at stake and shareholders breathing down his neck, should he risk launching the new phone, before he’s figured out what the saboteurs were up to?

Bollywood Shahzad: An unlikely movie star in Bollywood, this Shahzad is about to go global with his next movie. But when his agent mysteriously dies, he finds himself caught up in a web of corruption and underhand deals that makes him doubt his own stardom. Even as he falls from grace, he discovers the disturbingly nightmarish foundations of an industry built on selling dreams. If he attempts to pull the rug out from under it, will he be helping audiences, or shattering their beloved fantasies? 

Detective Shahzad: “I’m getting too old for this shit” is a phrase you’ll often hear from this Shahzad. A career spent fighting the very laws he upholds, has left him weary and worn and more than a little bit cynical. Just as he starts to think about finally planning that around the world road-trip in his beloved 68 Ford Mustang, he’s faced with an ethical dilemma he really didn’t need. 

Clerk Shahzad:  In a world where the fine line between humanity and technology faded long ago, workforces were increasingly mechanised. Like all Clerks, this Shahzad has spent his career blindly following instructions and augmenting himself as required for work. And like others, he has no personality, no interests, no life outside of work. When he is made redundant, he simply refuses to accept it, and continues to turn up for duty. Until he is forcibly removed from the premises. At that point; something snaps within him. 

Foreman Shahzad: Who wouldn’t love their job if they ran the floor of a Toy Factory. This Shahzad really believes in his work, he derives joy from the belief that the products they make at the factory, bring joy to children, and kids at heart, around the world. He can’t think of anything better. Until something odd happens with one of the toys. Turns out there’s more to the Toy Factory than he ever imagined. 

Astronaut Shahzad: Having been rejected from the space programme, this Shahzad spent decades building his own space programme. As soon as his rocket was ready for a manned flight, he was on it. Except it disappeared in a flash shortly after exiting the atmosphere. But is that  really the last we’ll see of the would-be astronaut?

Time Cop Shahzad: In this dimension time travel was invented by those that chose to go back and change things for a fee. History is in chaos and the future is under threat. Multiple paradoxes threaten to collapse past, present and future as we know it. This Shahzad’s job is to stop the time meddlers with extreme prejudice. 

Author Shahzad: One of this world’s most successful novelists has disappeared. Has he been kidnapped, killed, or is he responsible for his own disappearance? As the mystery mounts, the situation becomes as complex and confusing as one of this writer’s own novels, but will all be revealed in the third act, or will this Shahzad’s latest literary masterpiece remain unfinished?

Superhero Shahzad: In a dimension where superheroes exist, Shahzad is The Mechanic whose mission is to ‘fix that, which is broken’. Endowed with a natural ability to resolve problems, when his arch-nemesis Banjax, threatens to disable every electro-mechanical device on the planet and send humanity into the dark ages, his powers are tested to the limit. 

Operative Shahzad: Out of the game he might be, but when gangsters mess with his friends and family, he reveals that he has a very particular set of skills, skills he has acquired over a very long career, skills that make him a nightmare for bad people. They should have let a sleeping dog lie. Now there’s going to be carnage. 

Explorer Shahzad: Don’t ask this Shahzad for a home address, he can’t remember it, because he hasn’t been home in years. Where other Shahzads might like their humdrum routine, this one never sleeps in the same bed twice, because he’s always somewhere else by the next sleep. Every now and then though, he ends up the wrong person, in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Sage Shahzad: One day a wizened and weathered man emerges from the desert. The truths he brings will turn the world on its head. Surely no one will believe him. But the enigmatic man has a calm charisma that makes his message both convincing and compelling. Could his alternative reality finally make sense of a maddening world, or is he really the mad one? 

Guru Shahzad: They hang on his every word, they’ll kiss his hand and his cloak, they live their lives by his writings, and well… they’ve made him rich. Is he for real, is he a con artist or is there a third explanation? All we know for sure, is the beard is real. Probably. 

Transporter Shahzad: Uncanny skills whether at the wheel of a car, on a bike or at the controls of an aircraft or chopper, makes this Shahzad the ultimate delivery man. He never asks questions, he never misses his schedule, he never gets caught. But when he breaks one of those edicts, he risks falling foul of the other two as well.