[Interview] “I come from a universe where Hillary won, Brexit didn’t happen, and March of the Machine Aftermath was a couple of commander decks”

Groom Lake, NV — I admit, I was filled with equal parts anticipation and nervousness as I was led through the empty steel corridors by the soldiers (don’t worry, I don’t die in this one.) I was granted permission to speak to one of the “side effects” from Project 953, AKA “We Built A Dimensional Portal Just To See What Would Happen.” Her name was Sally, and she was from a universe wildly diverged from ours starting in 2015 when 3 subatomic quarks spun in different directions than ours. This is that conversation.

Hello, Entity #000155, my name is Kia.

Hey. You can call me Sally, by the way. Love your outfit.

Thanks! How are they treating you here?

It’s fine. Kind of boring, honestly. Groom Lake is so dull. You hear all that stuff about Rosewell and Area 51 but actually it’s just a bunch of old planes.

That time a bunch of kids tried to run in was kind of funny, though.

That didn’t happen in our universe. Or if it did, I didn’t hear about it.

Oh. Right, that’s what we were supposed to talk about. I have a bunch of questions prepared, that cool?

Yeah, go right ahead.

Okay, so according to the testimony I was given, in your universe, the vote for the United Kingdom to secede from the European Union didn’t go through, Donald Trump wasn’t elected in 2016, and instead of March of the Machine Aftermath, it was just 3 commander precons.

Yeah.

Could you elaborate on those for me?

Sure. I think everyone in Britain kind of caught on that Brexit was just an excuse to make it harder for foreigners to get into the country, and to fuck over the Irish. God, they love to do that. The scientists here claim that David Cameron actually DIDN’T go on a drunken tirade about Pakistanis on a podcast in this universe, so that probably helped. And Mr. Trump died of a heart attack really late into his campaign, unclear why, and Mrs. Clinton won by a landslide because Mike Pence is a freak. Shame, too, I kind of thought he was funny on The Apprentice.

Uh-huh?

Did he really win in this universe? Bizarre, I can’t imagine how that would turn out. The scientists refuse to tell me. Was he any good?

[We sat in silence for about a minute.]

Anyway, tell me about Aftermath.

Uhh… is it really important? I thought you’d want to talk more about the presidential elections.

No, I work for a Magic site.

Oh. Okay, so Aftermath was a few extra precons that they released after the main March of the Machine set, Nashi, Niv-Mizzet, and Narset. They were fine. The Niv-Mizzet one had kind of a cute gimmick, but not very fun to play. Was it really a full set in your universe? That’s totally fucked.

No, they called it a “micro-set,” but it was still fucked. They expected us to pay full price for a pack with half the cards in it.

The hell?

Yeah. It bombed horribly. And they took all of the wrong lessons from it, it’s still fucking up the releases to this day. Do you remember Spider-Man?

Full Standard-legal set.

Yup. Did someone tell you that?

Happened in our universe, too.

What?!

Yeah. Hasbro has been forcing Wizards to suck us dry for years. They just did the same thing with Ninja Turtles. Good way to distract us from Vance’s failing war in Iran, though.

Wh-

Yeah, dude’s insane. Wish Biden dropped out earlier so that Harris would have stood a chance. Maybe someone could have told her to oppose the Palestinian genocide.

Huh. I guess our universes aren’t that different after all???

All this shit was put into motion before we were born. I’d blame Reagan, but Entity #000203 told me that his universe didn’t have King James the VI and I, and that’s the closest I can tell to an actually good universe.

[It was at this point that our time was up, and armed guards came to separate us.]

Uh, thank you for this chat. It was very enlightening. I think?

No problem.