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The first time he does it, it is a clumsy thing, unsure and accidental. His face is wet - with spray from the waterfall, with tears, he’s not sure - and he stares at his arm and its six reflections. He nearly hits himself in the face seven times, but suddenly he reaches out - a bird flapping its wings, the first time a human has stretched their arm to the sky - and it feels like he’s touched God.
The next few times Murtaugh creates portals, it’s painstaking. He works at it, coaxing his arms to line up, edges overlapping, fingertips ready to brush against eternity. He does it until his mind aches from the strain of focusing the same movement seven times over, but in the end he has what he wants, and the drawing of a portal is smooth, instinctive, natural.
Eight arms, like the many arms of Shiva. It is the first time he thinks of that, and it is a heady thing, to be compared to a god. Liz anchors him then, when he could glut himself on ambitions, and he works outward instead, exploring, testing. When he encounters walls, his arm tears them down, limit by limit.
Several letters, a cat and a buried home later, he realizes even people who actually know about the Subnet think of him as something between an overbearing perfectionist and some sort of mutilated freak. They die anyways, but by then he has stepped outside the layers, and his head is crowded with plans and purpose. He thinks of their losses in the rare, wistful moments, when he has time to breathe.
He thinks of Einstein too, and if he’s still alive, and Liz -
But thinking of Liz is painful, when she runs from him, when he’s somehow gone from a man dreaming of gods to a monster who rips reality apart at the seams.
Eventually, the universe is almost quiet, and it’s only him and Liz left. Like it was always meant to be. It is the quiet of ruins, the quiet of reality decaying into the void, but it is the quiet of acceptance, too.
He turns away from the limits, from a universe led to collapse from his journey, and works his way back inward, retracing his steps, repairing what was lost. Almost all of it, at least. (He grows tired of hearing about Shiva, in those last years.)
The last time he draws a portal, it is truly the last of everything, so he looks past the layers of stone and metal keeping him entombed. The sun waits for him - the purest enlightenment of all.