The universe, you see, is nothing but a long-running experiment of an ancient race of gods, a massive computer simulation of nothing at all. Sort of like 'Sim Life' on our computers, only with vastly better graphics.
The code isn't airtight, though. To run this simulation, even the godlike programmers needed more than one machine. But it all had to be seamless, so you have the server boundaries, and the not-yet-initialized or garbage-collected lands where no one 'important' lives, also known as chaos.
You've also got a whole shitload of bugs.
For instance, if you can locate a server boundary (a bit of a trick in and of itself) and flood the area with chaos (objects taken from areas in the process of garbage collection retain 'deleted' bits, and areas with objects with deleted bits in them act in some ways like deleted areas until the server cleans everything up) both servers will be brought to a near standstill by the required data transfer as the objects close enough to affect the other server change form, location, and size rapidly. Eventually they'll give up, and make a fakey copy until they can resolve the 'chaos storm'.
This involves duplicating (temporarily) everything near the boundary. If you have some way of recognizing which side of the line you're on after it does this, you can step across, and once the storm is over both you and the copy on the original server -- who wouldn't have stepped across, because he'd realize he was already real -- will actually exist.
It's a bit dangerous. There's no way of testing the detector without stepping across, and if you get it wrong you can wipe yourself out of existance. Fortunately, in my case it worked.
I'm the Terry that lives on Furtoonia. But I'm pretty much identical to the Terry that lives on Spindizzy. The main difference is that I didn't turn my demon familiar into a pokemon, so I can still cast spells. We were diverging for a bit, but we've started corresponding and it tends to bring us closer together.
Nothing'll ever compare to the first few moments, when we tried to decide who'd stay on FT and who'd go to SD. We almost came to blows over who'd flip the coin... heh heh heh.
Oh, one more thing. The universe isn't really all a giant simulation in a computer somewhere (or rather, nowhere). That's just a magical paradigm -- a pattern by which to interpret the fact that releasing chaos on a 'server boundary' -- other paradigms might call then 'nodes' or 'ley lines' -- and performing an arcane ritual with a carefully prepared talisman can result in physical duplication.
Or maybe it is literally true. I don't know.