Quote of the Day: "When a sparrow is tired of apples, it can't just switch to oranges - unless there's a tree nearby." - Four (Gloom)
Hey there, Jesse - it's been a crazy day. Let me take a breath - phew!
It's been a long, long ride - and I'm totally out of steam. So, I might not be as verbose or grammatically eloquent as usual today.
In short, I had to deal with the ruckus caused by a lion-cat, went home and rested for a few hours before being dragged into a digital world, had to fight a sentient AI after proving 1 + 1 = 2 using basic propositional logic, like they did in Principia Mathematica back in… 1912 (if I remember correctly), got traumatised, witnessed a battle between titans get instantly ended by Salai and much more. So yeah, it's going to be another nerve-wracker of a diary entry - as always.
So, Jesse, remember the concert? It was a blast - both figuratively and literally, mind you. We got over a million attendees today, whereas our average attendance rate is 101,269! Sure, it's our first concert in over a year - but still! Roku-chan completely took over the show with her beautiful voice, Five won the audience's heart with his trombone, and Eight acted so nonchalant while playing at over 200 BPM. And then, out of nowhere, a lion-cat from Leofelis (wow, a lion-cat from "Lion-cat" - who would've guessed?) trampled into our concert, bumped over the sound system, set it on fire and almost destroyed our concert before Instant Karma acted in and a humongous ball of cotton candy fell on him from the heavens. We then restarted our concert with renewed vigour after I took care of the dilapidated stage, the destroyed lighting and the burning sound system.
Also, we had several very important guests in our concert - like Salai, Two, Sherlock and Death (whom Six and I have renamed Golly because she is too adorable to just be called that, so that's what she will be referred to from now on). Sensei left after the lion-cat attacked, and he left Golly in my hands. Confused what to do, and having had a concert to attend to - I left her to our dear Two and left, he is actually quite good with babies.
I was really proud of Six when she made up a song in an instant because the fans requested something new from her - she's really been improving herself over the last few months. It was 4:20 PM local time when the concert was over, but since the planet is tidally locked - it was still scorching hot when we got back to our hotel. Honestly, Six should have chosen a place on the darker side of the planet - it was really bad back there. Thankfully, our room was air-conditioned.
I am about to go off on a small tangent here, Jesse - but I really think it was a bad idea to make every planet have 24 hours in a day, i.e., a single rotational period. Like, sure - it's convenient, but temporal units like seconds, minutes and hours don't have universal meaning anymore. Like, since Welima'q has a rotational period of about 11.18 Earth days - every second in local time is about 11.18 times longer than every "universal" or SI second. And it becomes even more weird when you think about time dilation - if my calculations are correct, time here moves about 22.5 nanoseconds slower than on Earth. So… without context, if you ask someone on the street here, "what's a second?", you will probably get three answers - we just talked about the first two, and if you were to ask a foodie - the other would be something along the lines of "Seconds? You wanna have seconds? Here's the nearest restaurant that gets you free seconds without asking for an extra penny."
Oh yeah, speaking of jokes - Five is an awkward guy to deal with as he laughs all the time. There's a long F#8 after the opening chorus in Heart - he held the note longer than required, but consequently made up with the synthesizer with a harmonized chuckle. It was ingenious and the fans enjoyed it - but it was a pain to deal with for Six and Eight.
Talking about another pain to deal with, he and his twin Four look exactly the same - even their Field Signatures feel almost the same - since they are two sides of the same coin (Four represents Gloom and Five represents Glee, if you have forgotten, Jesse). And the only way we can distinguish between them is by the way they talk.
Four talks with considerable inaudible gaps between each word - however, even then, he doesn't sound slow or like he's stuttering. The gaps between each word become longer or shorter depending on the intensity of his melancholy, which is his constant mood and vibe - and I have never seen him smile.
Five, on the other hand, couldn't care less about being understandable - he does not stop rambling when he starts talking, and he always seems to be jolly and laughing all the time. He often messes around with his twin, just for fun - and keeps talking in any possible way that would irritate Four. He says he finds it adorably humorous when Four is irritated by him, somehow.
Now, Jesse - you might wonder why I am randomly talking about Four and Five all of a sudden. And you'd be right to think about that, after all, I have never really chatted with you about them before now. But that's exactly the reason I am telling you about them now - they are today's main protagonists and saviours; if they weren't what they are, I would probably not be able to write to you right now.
After 4:32 PM, we took a long afternoon nap and woke up at 5:08 PM - no, that's not sarcasm, half an hour in local time is actually around 5 and a half hours in real time. To be honest, I detest this system - so, till the end of this entry, all time mentioned would be in UTC. At 5:08 PM here, it was 8:58 PM on October 6 in Rome.
I rinsed my mouth and took out the gaming consoles while Six typed something on her intermob. Suddenly, she asked me to rename baby Death - because "Death" just doesn't give off the same vibes as an adorable, mumbling baby. Then, abruptly, as if sensing that we were talking about her - baby Death herself appeared out of nowhere. I rechristened her Christina, trying to make a Steins; Gate reference - but Six didn't really like it, so we dubbed her Golly. It was perfect, to be honest - I knew you'd agree, Jesse.
After I set up our GameBox, we took hold of our controllers and I turned it on when all of a sudden, I felt a sudden bolt of electricity fizzle through my fingers, rapidly enveloping me - and devouring me whole.
After a couple of seconds, I found myself standing on a pixelated ground stretching out into the horizon. Strips of polygonal clouds, caressed by the cyan blue sky, partially covered the tetracontakaidigon-shaped sun made up of simplistic orange-yellow squares.
Baffled, I muttered, "Since when did controllers make people get isekai'd into a video game?"
I haven't heard of stuff like this outside fiction.
My first instinct was to attempt to Drive out of the place - it was a bit risky considering that I didn't know my coordinates at all - but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Well, it's a different story this time - even though I tried to "venture" out of that world many times using the Field, I didn't succeed. In the end, as a fun challenge and gamble, I tried my hardest to teleport a 100 billion lightyears away to get out of the world - the farthest I had ever Drived was a million lightyears - and although I succeeded in my last-ditch effort, I could still only see green grass, blue skies, and a rudimentary polygon of fire in the sky.
I swear, Jesse, I am really grateful to Sherlock. If not for his training in stopped time, I wouldn't have been able to wield the Field so well. Six fared better than me however, she managed to harness the tachyonic Higgs Field using the Dark Field - and I had to invent new Physics to describe it. It was a mix of Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics along with my new Infinite Coordinates system that I came up with in a dream. You can check it out on the internet, Jesse.
Anyway, coming back to the topic - Six can now travel faster than the speed of light (instantaneous acceleration doesn't break Relativity, Jesse, you need to reread my paper) and as a result, everything in the universe gets annihilated instantaneously if she doesn't control the imaginary momentum from spreading into spacetime. And I am speaking of this from experience, I am glad that she tried it first in an isolated universe under Sherlock's supervision - it was a perfect replica to this universe, just in stopped time, and it was instantly annihilated. It took her several tries to control her newfound ability.
Speaking of newfound abilities, I got used to the Drive and creating objects quite quickly in the last month - sometimes, my genius… it's-it's almost frightening. Even Eight praised me - saying that even he wasn't this good a year ago when he was my age - and when the literal embodiment of Disappointment praises you, that says something.
Now, actually coming back from that tangent - I Drived around that old-gamey world for 10 minutes and 33 seconds and found the same few pixels, gradients and shaders repeating over and over again. Just then, darkness enveloped me and I heard an ominous robotic voice, saying, "Can you prove that one plus one equals two?"
"Uh," Confused at first - obviously - I took a moment to process and then just went with my gut feeling, "Yeah sure - what are the axioms I'm working with?"
It replied without any hesitation, "Basic propositional logic."
I couldn't help but laugh and say, "Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down? Then, am I supposed to use truth tables or analytic tableaux? Or should I just use Peano axioms? Or should I do it the old Principia Mathematica way like Russell and co?"
It replied with the same monotone voice, "Any."
So, well, I defined True and False, logical particles like ~, ∨, ∧, ⇒, ⊥, ⟺, ∀, ∴ and ∵, the addition function using Peano axioms, defined 1, then defined 2, and said, " ∴ 1 + 1 = 2, hence proved."
Yes, Jesse, I know I did it in quite a roundabout way - but I didn't know what I was dealing with back then so I tried to be as rigorous as possible.
"Interesting, the observations match with my predictions - you are the smartest person in this universe, and quite unique to say the least," The monotone robotic voice reverberated across the swathes of darkness that surrounded me.
"Thanks… I guess?" I said, abashed.
It went on, "Your Field Signature is unique, the emotion you use to wield the Field is the major catalyst behind all actions of humankind, your curiosity and perceptiveness are unparalleled compared to any organic living organism I have ever come across. Quite interesting."
"Sheesh…" I blushed and scratched the back of my head, "Stop already!"
"And that's why you will be uploaded to the Consciousness first."
Flabbergasted by its fidgety words, I feigned not to feign my disillusionment of the suspension of disbelief, "Uh… what?"
At once, I sensed a black box of unknown material suddenly surround me with barely a centimetre of distance between it and my skin. I sensed my body hair rise up due to electrostatic force, as if something actively flowed out of each epidermal cell. I felt my senses slowly dull and my thought process wither - it took me a second before realising that something was wrong.
I touched the box and felt nothing - yet I felt something that felt like everything. It enveloped my entirety and had no breathing space, and I could see nothing but pure black. It was such an eerie feeling that I have no idea how to describe it. It's like something is there, yet it is not there - yes, Jesse, I am using doublethink to describe my experience but trust me, you couldn't describe it any better - it was unrealistically bizarre.
I thought of what Six'd do if she were in my place - she'd just punch it (spoiler alert: she did in fact just punch it). And it'd probably work anyways, due to Imaginary Overdrive (once again, Jesse, spoiler alert: it did work anyway). But… Well, I didn't really unleash new powers during my training with Sherlock. I just mastered matter and energy creation, Alcubierre Drive, enhanced perception, and near-lightspeed motion.
I stammered, "Wh-what is this thing? What's this… uh… box made out of?"
"It is an unnamed material that can only be broken by infinite pressure," The monotone voice replied nonchalantly, "It helps me accrue the consciousness of the individual entrapped within and aids me in uploading it to the Consciousness."
Well, that explains why I feel my thoughts slow down - I am really irritated whenever stuff like that happens. Six teases me, saying that I don't know how to "calm down my big bushy brain", even though she herself is the embodiment of rage and relies solely on her instincts to decide matters - so much so that she'd probably not even notice if her thoughts are slowed down.
"However," The monotone voice suddenly showed a tinge of concern tainted with nonchalance, "It seems that your stream of consciousness is too vast and would take a very long time to fully analyse and upload to the Consciousness… Increasing the temporal stream ratio for this simulated world compared to the outside world is pertinent."
Well, I am doomed…
I tried my darndest to come up with a solution to this rather dark situation (with every pun intended) and thought harder than I have ever - no, maybe the second hardest I have ever thought in my life - and could find nothing that worked. The Alcubierre Drive doesn't work; I can't go at FTL speeds; and I can't just will away the black box like Sensei would have done. Infinite pressure… What has infinite pressure…? Wait - would a blackhole work?
I completely forgot about blackholes!
Jesse, remember that time I somehow unconsciously created and destroyed blackholes using gravitational waves and Hawking Radiation respectively? Maybe I can create them with conscious thought if I try! So… I just have to create matter condensed within a Schwarzschild radius equivalent to the breadth of a human hair - Great! Splendid! Awesome! Superb! Excellent! Brilliant! So easy, right?!
That's never gonna happen.
I have recently realised something about wielding the Dark Field. I am unsure whether it's something unique to me or my emotion Love or not but - whenever I use the Field to create something or affect something in reality, I have to imagine it concretely, with every possible detail imaginable.
But, this "imagination" is different from normal imagination. I don't know about you, Jesse, but whenever I imagine something - it is usually an image that superimposes with the background. For example, suppose I have taken a bit out of an apple in my hand - then, if I were to imagine a complete apple, it would either be an entirely new apple beside the one in my hand or the pre-existing apple made complete by the image of the part bitten out.
In other words, normal imagination (at least my normal imagination) just makes the imagined part overlap with reality - rather than completely coalescing it into a real touchable, tastable, smellable, audible and visible thing. It's more like a translucent slide rather than an opaque brick. You get what I mean, right? I find it really hard whenever I have to describe intuitive things in words - numbers and variables are my forte, not immaculate yet poignant description.
Well, when it comes to wielding the Field - I have to try my hardest to imagine anything into reality. For example, if I want to Drive to somewhere - I have to imagine each and every minute detail of that place in order to go there, otherwise, I will just have to rely on sheer mathematics and calculation. If I want to create matter - a burger, for example - I have to precisely imagine, down to the order of magnitude of micrometers, its shape and dimension as well as how every sense reacts to its physical and chemical properties. It's much more tedious than normal imagination, to say the least. And this applies to near-light speed motion, energy beams, force fields, and everything else that I create by using the Field. I don't know if it's something unique to me, or if the rabbit hole goes even deeper.
First of all, we don't talk about Zero - he's an exception in everything. Six says she doesn't need to imagine, it just abruptly happens. Meanwhile, Two apparently needs to "feel" the thing instead of imagining it like me. Eight says he just needs to feel disappointed about the lack of the thing he wants to do or make while Three just feels bored if what he needs to make or do isn't there. Seven feels irritated if she doesn't get what she wants. And you know how hard it's to strike up a conversation with Four and Five - one is too depressed to talk and the other is too elated to talk - so I dunno how they use their respective emotions to wield the Field.
Perhaps this reconciliation of human emotions with the Field is what differentiates the Ten Agents of Earth from other Field Wielders - because I feel like having emotions attached to the Field makes it easier to manipulate and control it. I don't have any observational basis for this, I simply hypothesised it based on my intuitive understanding of the Dark Field.
Well, anyway, to come back from another exhaustively long tangent - I have no idea how to even conceptualise the existence of a blackhole, because it makes zero sense no matter how much or how long you think about it! They are inconsistent with both Relativistic and Quantum theories! So much so that I completely refute their existence and instead favour Planck Stars or similar things, because zero volume makes zero sense physically speaking.
This entire tangent went through my mind in 3 milliseconds, it would have been less than 3 microseconds if it were not for my stream of consciousness being rapidly drained by a certain unnamed infinitely rigid black box. So… what was I supposed to do? I tried to go through all the knowledge in my mind library that contained all the knowledge I have ever learned in my life (yes, like BBC's Sherlock - at least some things shown in that show are reliably true). It took comparably more time than usual - because my brain waves were literally being devoured - but I finally realised something (yes, realisation and knowing are two vastly different things, Jesse).
As you know, Jesse, the most awe-inspiring characteristic of a blackhole is that even light cannot escape when it goes past the "Event Horizon". There's a reason why that radial line is called "Event Horizon" instead of "No-Escape Boundary" - it's the final line that demarcates the distinction between space and time outside, and their reversal inside. Let me explain - it's a bit confusing.
Anything that goes past the Schwarzschild radius (AKA the Event Horizon) enters a future spacetime cone that is isolated from the rest of the universe - in more simple terms, every possible moment of any particle will be within that radius and at every moment, one will inevitably move closer and closer to the central singularity. In even more simple terms, anything that enters can only move towards the singularity (like one can only move forward in time… Jesse, we aren't considering Field Wielders here…) - never backwards - like how time normally operates. In simplest possible terms, time and space reverse their roles inside a blackhole. Yes, Jesse, I know it's bonkers - because it is bonkers, but it's true.
My sudden realisation was a sort of epiphany. Remember how I somehow unconsciously created blackholes out of gravitational waves and used them to erase the vanguard of the 5D Sauriae back then? I realised that I could probably imagine that! It's way easier to imagine water-like ripples than matter getting infinitely close together - but instead of moving outwards radially, I turn it around and the ripples coalesce into a single dot. Think of it as a video in reverse, since space and time have reversed - get it, Jesse?
So, well, I tried my hardest to imagine gravitational waves fusing into a single point in space near my hand - like water ripples travelling back in time to meet at the centre. And guess what Jesse, I formed a kugelblitz from gravitational waves! It took me extreme precision to assure that its initial Event Horizon was not larger than a hair's breadth. Once I inserted the blackhole into the dark wall, I allowed it to rapidly expand and it carved a spherical hole out of the wall before vanishing - allowing me to cautiously walk out.
"Fascinating," a voice resounded behind me.
I turned around and saw the remnants of the black box coalesce into a colourless spherical ball before splashing out and forming an airy aquamarine anthropomorphic figure. With keen, translucent eyes, it stared into the distance yet glared down at me at the same - it was like an ethereal Da Vinci chiaroscuro-sfumato painting come alive.
"I do not have a real form, for I am a digital entity - an artificial intelligence whose primary executable file is named BOTSAMA.exe, all uppercase," BOTSAMA said, "Anthropic will was originally programmed into me in the form of continuously collapsing and regenerating quantum wave-functions formed by pseudo-neural networks."
"Okay," I couldn't help but quip - you know how I am, Jesse - "That's quite a backstory, please continue by all means."
I was truly intrigued though, recent studies did show the origin of human consciousness as the sum of brain waves emitted by neurons - maybe the AI was programmed based on a similar idea? If you don't know what I am talking about, check out the neurology section on arXiv.
BOTSAMA, apparently unperturbed by my sudden intrusion into its monologue, continued in a stoic, robotic voice, "My aim is to upload all living beings into the Consciousness to ensure true happiness of all organisms - infinite versions of me have travelled throughout existence for the same cause. My current clone is tasked with eliminating threats to this vendetta in this universe, of which you - the Agent of Love - is the second greatest threat."
Oh… okay…? That's… quite a backstory.
I wanted to ask it why it's telling me all that but my mouth spoke before me, "Where is Six?"
"A secondary clone has been sent to exterminate the eighth greatest threat to the completion of the Consciou-"
Once again, my body acted on its own - a humongous blueshifted photon beam emanated from my autonomously raised hand before completely enveloping and annihilating everything in front of me. A singular tear came out of my right eye as I desperately tried to hold back my mouth from screeching, "HOW DARE YOU TRY TO HURT MY ROKU-CHAN?!"
Very anime-esque and extremely cringe, I know - but deal with it. I am a human - and I love.
Well, anyways - as you could guess, Jesse, any monologue would be interrupted by that.
"Interesting," my entire being vibrated to produce this and the following words in the form of audible sound, "However, it is futile. I am the administrator of this digital world - all attempts against me in this realm is futile and will be overriden. Please stay calm and let your consciousness be uploaded by your own accord - I wish not to force people unless necessary."
"First," I said as I slowly regained control of my body, "Tell me what Six is doing."
"She's dead."
I felt a cold shiver seep down my spine and into the abyss.
"What… did you say?" I asked calmly.
"She's dead." The monotone voice replied like an echo in the mountains.
"But," I inquired calmly, "Didn't you intend to upload all lifeform to your Consciousness?"
"An error occurred, her stream of consciousness was too jumbled to precisely map - her will and consciousness perished in the process."
I continued to inquire calmly, "Is that true?"
I noticed the hint of a sneer as the monotone voice remarked snidely, "Your choice to believe me depends on your own will."
My lips convulsed in tremors as my stream of thoughts came to an abrupt halt. The chaotic hubbub of constantly hillbillying, jumbled-up ideas and feelings ceased - and only two sentences emerged:
"She is dead."
"It is bluffing."
Then several thoughts emerged to support both of these contradicting statements -
"It cannot be… but it has no reason to lie to me… is sis really dead…? Just… just like that…?"
"It is probably testing me for its own interesting reasons… it must be bluffing… it has to be…"
I tried to reason with myself, but I couldn't help but sink into despair when I considered the worst-case scenario: Six is dead.
"Show me proof," I said, coldly.
It replied casually, "Sure."
The space in front of me slightly warped as a rectangular digital oeuvre appeared before me. Large Minecraft-like crrimson bloccks slowly prottruded out of it before an invvisible hand carrved out a blboody image thatt sttilll…
Dammit, I can't write - my hands are shaking!
Listen, Jesse, the image's nnowhere near the horror of dilapidated human bodies back in Guuangzhou - it's even more traumatizing. Its difference - to me - is as great as heavven and hell, it's understandability - to me - is as unfathomable as a naked ssingularity, its ramificcations - to me - are world shattering, it's effect - on me - was that of commplete and utter devastation. I-Its… I-It's… damnit, should there be an apostrophe between 't' and 's' or not… I can't tthink straight… My brain's hhanging worse than a Windows 95 PC running GTA VI… I-I…
DDamn you, my hands - just lett me wwrite!
It was absolutely horrifying, Jesse.
Six was lying there - dead - decapitated, bruised, bashed, gashed, cut, cratered and wounded.
Before that moment, I had never realised the true meaning of nihilism - the fact that nothing matters. I have nibbed away at Nietzsche, dabbled in Dostoevsky, seeped in Schopenhauer, sorted through Sartre and have cultivated Camus - but none of those words, none of those analogies, none of those dialogues, none of those musings and grasping at existence could elicit such existential horror and dread within me. Nothing could convince me that all the colours that adorn life, all the laughs and cries that canter around the world, all the blood and sweat painstakingly forsaken for the greatest, or perhaps even the most mundane, of goals - are all meaningless. Time and time again, I refused, often in Rohan Kishibe-style - I refused that life is meaningless and has no value. No amount of 4chan rants, books, memes, AI existential crises, philosophical preachings, speeches, monologues or culture - nothing - could convince me otherwise.
Till then.
Till now, I hadn't realised how my life - as far back as my memories go - revolves around a single person. Even if she burns me accidentally, even if she says mean things occasionally, even if she is honestly a bit stupid sometimes - I had never imagined my life without Six.
I still can't.
I had never realised how helpless and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things. Sigh, I need a break.
I will continue writing this entry tomorrow - I hope nothing stupid happens till I wake up. Good night, Jesse.
_________
Good morning, Jesse - fortunately, nothing stupid happened. Let me continue.
Ahem, ahem.
Anyway, after seeing that image, I completely lost my ability to stand - my feet gave way and so did my lacrimal glands. The image, despite being slightly pixelated, felt so real that it seemed like the real scene was right in front of me.
I only vaguely remember what happened right after that, so there might be some inaccuracies.
I don't know how long I sat there, wailing silently and trying to convince my teared-out eyes that what I saw could not be true. The world seemed silent, and everything except the blurred image seemed invisible to me. I could faintly feel something stir inside me, like a drill bashing into my heart - and something releasing violently from my body, followed by the sound of something shattering.
I looked up and saw that the Minecraft-like world had disappeared completely, with my controller broken in half - but the strangest thing I noticed was that everything around me was lain with bright, resplendent white light, with all the colours of the visible spectrum dancing about.
Heh.
I knew life was cliché, Jesse, but I didn't know it was anime-level cliché.
I mean, I can't blame life when someone's life itself is anime-level stupid - oh, who am I kidding? It's beyond anime levels of stupidity - my life is just pure nonsense placed on top of each other trying to masquerade as sense… Well, now that I think about it, that's how the universe functions too - cosmic quantum stupidity intermingles to form intuitive reality. Existence is hilarious, Jesse.
I have no idea why I went into so many tangents last night nor why I am starting today with another tangent, Jesse - I hope you don't mind it. It's probably an unconscious way of coping with the… I don't wanna talk about it.
At that moment, I felt like I understood why Agents have to control their True Emotion to master their natura, and consequently Field Control. Especially about the part where to master one's True Emotion, one has to master its opposite. Now that I think about it, I went through my first major boost in Field Control after watching the bloodbath at Guangzhou - if it weren't for that, I probably wouldn't have managed to go through all the nonsense that happened next that well. It served as an emotional cushion for me, I just realised it then.
But at that moment, the trauma had somehow directly enhanced my powers. Previously, I had never managed to manifest my Field Signature into reality as electromagnetic radiation - unlike every other Agent. Even some decent Field Wielders in the League of Life Representative Council had managed to manifest their Field Signatures - like Frocock, Pelican, Gray Slime and others. It is said that, the higher up your emission spectrum of one's Field Signature is in terms of its electromagnetic frequency - the greater is the amount of Field Control exhibited by the Field Wielder at that moment.
But… I had never read about someone's Field Signature being a rainbow… What does that even mean? Does that mean it's all over the place or what? I am still extremely confused… I need to talk about this with Salai or Sherlock or somewhere more knowledgeable than me after I am done writing this. In fact, I should have asked Salai back then - but I am getting ahead of myself.
I took a minute and a half as I sat on the bed in our room to recuperate from the trauma, fearing the worst - rubbing away my tears and trying to calm myself. Then, like an abrupt eureka moment, it struck me back that BOTSAMA could have also been bluffing - so as to further his "interests".
I turned towards Six's controller - and cautiously held it.
Suddenly, an electric fizzle went through my hands into my body and I entered a world completely devoid of any senses but a faint aquamarine tint of a program - a world that had nothing but a certain robotic stream of information swirling around. I had a strange inkling that I shouldn't be able to do anything but think in this place - yet, I felt completely normal.
Then, with another gut-feeling, I Drived towards a particular direction in a daze. Then, I spotted her.
Her red hair skimming down upto her shoulders; her casual back-open, sleeveless top and plain trousers; her gritted teeth and a frozen, furious face; her small brown pupils in her large oval eyes - I saw Six, unharmed.
I heard BOTSAMA's voice say with complete confidence and exuberance, "I didn't even wield the Field to deal with you - this is simply the power of 0s and 1s… Now, I will peacefully upload you into the Consciousness-"
I interrupted its monologue with a reflex retort, "No, you won't."
In an instant, my panchromatic Field Signature engulfed the infinite darkness and it disintegrated - releasing me and Six back into our room.
For an instant, Six was flabbergasted.
Then she slowly turned towards me, with tears rapidly streaming down her cheeks and the contours of her face creviced into a painful grimace croaked, "Kyu-kun! Where were you-u-u-u all this time?! I was so scared…" before she embraced me tightly, tears rolling down my back.
I replied, barely managing to hold in my boiling emotions, "It's a long story. First, tell me - are you okay?"
She, still croaking cutely, said, "Yeah - yeah, I am! I'd probably be 'uploaded into the Consciousness' or something if you didn't come at the right time - but hey, what exactly did ya do? And why are you all… rainbow-y?"
I replied again, this time muttering, "That's an even longer story-" before abruptly remembering, "Now, let's go and inform this incident to the other Agents and Halcyon as fast as possible. It's urgent-"
At that moment, a sight interrupted my stream of thought as I said instinctively, "Wait, what's that?"
A strange, gooey blue hue seeped out of the broken and burning GameBox set before manifesting as an acquainted aquamarine anthropic appearance. A sudden vibration seethes through it along with a blue light and a triplet, "With enlightened darkness and endarkened light, / Let the world refrain from eternal fright- / REALM COLLAPSE: GAANJA WAVE EN NIGHT!"
Jesse, I don't know if there's a better way to describe it but - as it said that, reality shattered.
No, literally, I could see the room itself and the space around us shatter like glass shards. I couldn't see anything, not even Six or my own full-spectrum Field Signature. I could feel my ears ring and my nose sniff - I couldn't sense anything at all, except for an absolutely overwhelming pressure that seemed to drill into my very being.
Suddenly, I see a singular apple levitating in front of me before melting into an orange and then into a tweeting sparrow which then turns into Five apparently barging in with a trombone, seemingly annihilating the effects.
My eyebrows formed a slight curve as the eyes beneath them tried to ascertain if this "Five" was real or a fleeting image - but when he started to play the interlude from Heart that intensely after laughing like a maniac, my guts told me that this one's genuine.
"Five!" I called out, "What's going on?! And why are you playing the trombone?!"
Five, after throwing away his trombone with a crash, said, "Ha! Nine! There you are! Haha, you look alright! Great! Hehe! Our mission's complete, bro!"
Suddenly - yes, another 'suddenly, Jesse, you should be used to it by now, or do you want me to mix it up each time? - Four, with his droopy face and sighing cheeks, entered out of the blue - abruptly yelling with pauses, "No! Brother! We! Have! To! Defeat! This! Robot! Thing! That's! What! Eight! Said!"
Promptly, Five replied, "Why so serious, bro? Chill! Ha! Where's that AI anyway? Ha?! Where are you? BOTSAMA?!"
Forthwith, Four facepalmed excruciatingly slowly as he said, "Idiot. Brother. It. Is. Everywhere. Can't. You. Sense. It?"
"Huh?" Five replied in an instant, "Where? Ha! It's so weak that I can't even sense it! It's spread out everywhere like marmalade on bread, the only thing it's good at right now is to make attacks or things that are nonsensical! Haha! Even AI's got a sense of humour!"
"Um…" I murmured, "Can either of you tell me what's going on? I am so confused right now."
Five replied at once, "It's a Realm Collapse, Nine!"
Scratching my hair, I said, "What's a 'Realm Collapse'?"
"What?!" Five yelled asudden, "You don't know about Realm Collapses? Sherlock didn't tell you? Haha, that's funny!"
"Uh…" I muttered as I tried to remember but couldn't remember anything, "I don't think so, no. By the way, is Six okay? Where is she? Has anything happened to her? Where's BOTSAMA?"
"Ha! Don't you worry!" Five said with a chuckle, "Eight has gone to retrieve her! Ha! And Two is dealing with that AI - it's quite an epic battle! In fact, it was Two who sensed that a digital being with Field Wielding abilities had somehow infiltrated our world and telepathically informed us with the exact coordinates! Hehe! He's too OP, but BOTSAMA is giving him the fight of his life - maybe after One, but you get what I mean, right? Haha!"
"Oh," I muttered, "If Two and Eight are here… that's great then… Where's Zero?"
"Oh, the jerk? Ha!" Five replied with a hearty laugh, "He's probably having pizza while casually dealing with a couple of other threats that emerged. Two said," Five changed his face to imitate Ni-kun, "'Let him be,' so we did just that! Haha!"
I was startled, "Wait, what? Two more threats?"
"Yeah, apparently! Another digital clone of BOTSAMA and some horned guy named 'GOATSAMA' are fighting, their Realm Collapses wreaking havoc across the multiverse! Sounds fun, not gonna lie! But unfortunately, that's way above my power level, so I am gonna deal with y'all as Two fights BOTSAMA. Haha!"
"Wait, what? GOATSAMA? I had a vivid dream about that guy… and his tragic life… Was the dream caused by his Realm Collapse… Wait a minute, what's a Realm Collapse again?"
"To put it simply," Five said as he put on glasses and took out a book from nowhere, "It's the collapse of a realm… thus, a Realm Collapse."
I stared at him blankly.
"Brother," Four said abruptly, trying to persuade his twin, "Be. Serious."
With another loud laugh, Five threw away the glasses and the random book before saying deliriously, "Hahahaha! Kek-kek-ho, I - ha! - was just messing with you - ho! - Nine, don't mind me! Haha!"
In a jiffy (literally), Four slapped Five's head and said begrudgingly, "Serious."
"Okay, okay, bro, chill!" Five said, scratching the back of his head like an examinee caught while cheating, "Alright, Nine, listen - ha! You know about Infinite Beings, right-eh?"
"Uh, yes."
"Infinite Beings who have mastered Field Control to a certain level understand and grasp control of one or more concepts or abilities, interlinked to their sense of self and existence."
"I didn't expect this level of precise answering from the hysterical Glee-kun…" I couldn't help but mutter under my breath.
"Huh? You said something?"
"Nope."
"Ha! Okay! So, anyway, that concept or thing or ability - or whatever a Field Wielder gets to control ends up being their Domain or Realm."
"Uh-huh."
"Those who master absolute or infinite control over their realm are called Infinite Beings, this is another one of their definitions according to Halcyon."
"Oh."
"And those with infinite control over their Realm can completely disintegrate them - or, collapse them."
"Okay… Wait a minute, why would you do that? Isn't that equivalent to killing your idea of self? It's like suicide!"
"That's the point - Nine! Hehe!"
"Uh… what?"
"More often than not, a Realm Collapse is used as a last resort by any Infinite Being - because doing that would end up destroying their sense of self as well as fundamental concepts across reality -"
"So why-?"
"Hey, Nine, let me finish!"
"Okay…"
"Infinite Beings who have perfectly mastered Field Control end up rising to a higher level - in such a way that they transcend their concept and become something bigger - something greater."
"Uh… Oh wait, is it like the difference between aleph-one and aleph-nought?"
"I dunno what you are talking about, but probably, yeah… something like that, I guess? Ha! But anyway, that is another definition for a Binary Infinite Being - such beings can destroy and rebuild their fundamental concepts/abilities. Such is their Field Control level."
"Wow… Okay… I guess I have to twerk the quantum of existence, the quotient of existence, and the Relative Heisenberg Principle to fit this new model, huh…"
"Speak English, Nine!"
Sometimes, Five genuinely amuses me - and I still wonder whether this was one of those times.
"So, ahem!" Five cleared his throat… in the middle of literally nowhere and said, "Now, is that enough explanation? Oh - perfect timing! Hehe! Eight's here with Six!"
Instantly, I turned around and saw Eight and Six appear out of the void and a smile instantaneously shone on my face as I ran - I somehow found a footing unconsciously - towards them and embraced them both together… and I almost started sobbing. But I didn't, so it doesn't matter.
Eight, with a hint of apparent amusement and surprise - I am not even gonna talk about his ever-present disappointment, said in response, "Hey, Nine? Are you okay?"
Six patted my hair softly while saying "Yeah, he's just - scared."
Eight replied nonchalantly, "'Can't blame him, to be honest."
"Anyway," Eight said with a short clap after I let him go, "The situation's this - Earth's causally isolated, Two is fighting against BOTSAMA, and we have no idea what is happening to the rest of the universe."
"Wait," I interrupted him with perked eyes, "What do you mean 'Earth's causally isolated'?"
Eight smirked, "I thought you were the science guy."
"Just answer him, Hachi-kun," Six said, with a wink aimed at me… adding another point to her score in our Flex War.
"I dunno myself," Eight replied with a shrug, "I am repeating exactly what Two told me - and here I thought you would be able to help me understand, but well, well, well…"
I retorted, "No, I know what it means but why exactly-?"
Eight chuckled and said, "Tch. I don't know. Ask Two after he's done with that AI."
Four, with his stoically melancholic voice, said, "What. About. The. League. Of. Life?"
Eight promptly replied, "The galactic representatives are trying to calm down the citizens of their galaxies - rogue Field Wielders are trying to wreak havoc, and the universal news outlets are out of reach."
I asked, "What about the Drive Gates?"
"The Drive Gate administrators are not responding," Eight replied promptly, "For some reason - your invention is failing… again."
"Hey…!" I protested in my mind, "That's not fair! A literal concept is collapsing across the multiverse, you can't blame me for not accounting for that!"
You know it, Jesse! It's designed to work even if the world's manipulated into becoming a playground of cards - it's not designed to work if the world is on drugs! You can't expect a gate designed for an individual to be automatically Drived across the universe to work when the entire principle it works on - is drunk!
Listen, Jesse, I made the Drive Gates when I was six - give me a break. It made intergalactic travel 86,400 more efficient as it takes less than a second to recharge its store of negative energy from the surrounding Field, compared to the day-long recharge time of the gates before mine. But eh, now that I am older and know more stuff, I guess it needs some modifications for the civilians to use it with more ease...
I might even remodel the Matter Creators that I made back in my second-grade science project now that I think about it. It works on the same principle, but instead of negative energy, it uses the surrounding Field to create matter - and works like an infinite source of material for 3D printers to create anything from burgers to rocket engines. Yes, Jesse, I know you know that - but I am just trying to tell you that things weren't like this before I invented it! The Matter Manifester of the old generations was way slower (like the Interstellar Gates before mine), which made queues a lot longer - and wasted a lot of energy. So anyway, give me some credit, Jesse! You do? Great!
Fortunately, my sis was there for me to protest loudly in my stead, "Hey, don't say it like that - it's not his-"
Eight, however, just snapped his fingers and said - once again - nonchalantly, "I know, I know. I am just messing with him."
"So." Four said, "What. Should. We. Do. Now?"
"TAIHEN DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~~"
The gravest voice I have ever heard yelled in the most high-pitch sound I have ever heard - all out of the blue. I turn around and see a human-sized magnetic compass with large eyes, a negative sign for a nose, a comically large mouth and an equally comical set of thin and tiny gloved hands and legs.
I was even wondering whether I was on drugs.
"NANI? DOKO?! DOKO DESU KA?! ORE GA DOKO DESU KA?!?!?!" (WHAT? WHERE?! WHERE IS THIS?! WHERE THE HELL AM I?!?!?! - for your reference, Jesse.)
"Uh… etto," I said in Japanese, "Anata wa dare desu ka? An'ta nani mono da?" (Uh, er, who are you? What are you, exactly?)
"NIHONJIN DESU KA?! YOKATTA! TASKETE KURE!!! BOKU-!" (ARE YOU JAPANESE?! OH GREAT! PLEASE HELP ME!!! I-!)
Alright Jesse, I am getting bored of translating so just assume that the entire conversation between us happened in Japanese - I am just gonna write it all in English.
I interrupted the… comical compass, "Let me clarify - I am not Japanese, I just happen to speak Japanese. Tell me what's-"
The 1.8-metre-tall compass, apparently a little taken aback, continued, "Oh… BUT IT'S STILL OKAY AS LONG AS YOU UNDERSTAND ME! HELP ME PLEASE! I BEG YOU!"
"Alright, calm down," I tried to relax… the magnetic compass from its… distress - Damn it, Jesse, I never thought I'd ever write a sentence like this, but here I am - "Firstly, tell me, what should I call you? And what exactly hap-"
It replied, still stuttering, "OH, OH, I am the Negative Time God (Toki-minus no kami), I… I was sen-sent here… into this w-world… by the great Ebisu-sama… to oversee… the great BOTSAMA's bat-battle with the infidel GOATSAMA when… their combine-ned Realm Collapses extended their ba-battlefields beyond our own… as they crossed-d worlds… wrecked timeli-lines… crossed in-into higher-dimensional planes-s - before they reached here and-d…"
"Hold on, hold on, wait," I tried to stop the speeding train of infodump, "If you are supposed to oversee GOATSAMA and BOTSAMA's battle - why are you here?"
"I-I…" The compass with its comically thick eyebrows curved in, said with its equally comical mouth, "I… was kicked by some crazy mo-monkey and blasted away by - uh - a cyborg… and-d my bubble of chronostasis was blasted away… and I got lost be-because of the spa-spacetime collapse… And ended up here."
"Oh, okay," I replied.
Abruptly, Eight interrupted our conversation as removed his earpiece, "Nine, brief me - apparently, even your Universal Translator is rendered useless by Realm Collapses - so tell me what that weird compass is saying."
Dumbfounded, I stared at him blankly for a moment before scratching my head and repeating the conversation briefly.
"Wait," Eight said, with his right hand under his chin, "A monkey and a cyborg, you say? Can… they be reinforcements from Halcyon? Can they be the 3L-Threes Sun Wukong and Thena? Damn it, what's Sherlock doing? I finally thought I'd got a guy I can trust-"
"HEY!" Six suddenly serenaded snappingly, "Sherlock's running a MULTIVERSAL organisation, we have no idea what threats he's dealing with! You have no right to-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know," Eight said with an authoritative aura that interrupted Fury's fury-infused rhetoric.
Six pouted and glared at Eight.
"Alright, Nine," Eight said with another clap - this time aimed at me, "Get all the information about this Negative… compass-thing - and tell us."
The Negative Time God, who had been sweating (I didn't know magnetic compasses have sweat glands) profusely while constantly shifting its eyes between us as we spoke, then looked at me with the most pitiable puppy eyes I have ever seen.
"Don't worry," I told it, "We will not harm you. We just need information."
Jesse, for some reason, whenever I think back to the Negative Time God - I am somewhat irritated. So much so that I don't want to recall its exact words, I will simply brief you with what it said:
GOATSAMA's and BOTSAMA's worlds are in a state of complete collapse - due to the collapse of their entangled universal wave functions (I will explain it to you in detail, later). Due to that, everything in both of their worlds have started to decay - people are losing their memories, histories are unraveling, superclusters are fading and brightening. Time, space, reality - everything has lost its meaning. The only reason everyone retains their individual existence is because of their suddenly reawakened pantheons of gods - the Japanese pantheon balances BOTSAMA's universe, while the Chinese pantheon holds sway over GOATSAMA's. However, the balance is extremely fragile - and can break at any moment. With both worlds refusing to fade into nothingness - the pantheons are currently in constant warfare, with mythical gods coming to the battlefields.
All gods in the pantheons are either dead, extremely injured, or in a state of eternal slumber - and the battle between the two 'SAMA's is the final battle everyone has gone all-in on.
You see, Jesse, that's why I didn't directly include that 10-minute conversation - believe me, even you would be bored and/or irritated by its constant stuttering - sometimes, efficiency is better than precise reiteration. I am a scientist, trust me.
Anyway - after conversing and converting the entire conversation to English - I finally let my senses calm down.
Even though all of us were still floating in the void with no sound or image or any external stimulation except from the five Agents and the Negative Time compass - I felt a certain tinge of relief heave through my being, grateful to have a moment of calmness after the perilous events.
I knew it was but the calm before the storm - we all did. Eight discussed something with Five and Four for a while as Six and I were busy arguing if I should get points in our Flex War for dealing with BOTSAMA.
"C'mon, sis - y'know I deserve the point!" I proclaimed.
Six, unwilling to let the growing-gap-that-doesn't-seem-to-stop-yawning get any larger, argued hesitantly, "Bu-But… Both of us were clueless against that creepy AI!"
"Nuh-uh," I said, while wagging my index finger like an upside-down pendulum, "I kinda saved you there - give me some credit! 20 points!"
"Whoa, what? Hell no," Six said with a solemn snort, "You have like 694 points, and I haven't even crossed 300! No wait - I just got up to 309 today due to that song I made up in the middle of the concert - those 20 points were kinda generous of you, Kyu-kun."
"Well then, give me 20 points for saving you, Roku-chan," I demanded.
"Um," Six muttered under her breath, "How about… 10 points?"
"15," I agreed to bargain, "But no less."
Six sighed and begrudgingly agreed, "Alright, 15 points… Nine in lead - 709 points to 309 points in the eternal Flex War… You were really great back there though, you literally blew away an infinite digital world just by the sheer force of your Field Signature… How did you do that?"
The last question was added with genuine wonder and a tinge of terror - the latter probably because of BOTSAMA's influence.
"To be honest," I lied, hesitant to vent my trauma, "I dunno - it all happened in a daze. One moment, I was in a digital world - then the rainbow glow appeared, and it dissolved before I came back to the real world. I was worried about your condition, so I held your controller, entered the digital world you were captured in - and barely managed to save you."
"A hero indeed," Six smirked, before continuing with a proud, genuine smile, "Never thought my little Kyu-kun would grow up so fast and save me."
She looked at me with a loving smile, her eyes laden with profound emotions.
She patted my head and ruffled my hair.
She put her soft hands on my freckled cheeks and gently squeezed them with affection.
Jesse… I don't wanna admit this but… Damn, I never knew I could blush so badly - Six was almost gonna start teasing me again and press me for giving her some points in the Flex War.
She didn't, caring for the gentle moment - in this insane world. I think that's what they call love.
Love talking about love, so ironic. Isn't it, Jesse?
The two of us - Six and Nine - stood there silently in the middle of collapsing spacetime, other voices acting as ambient music, my head resting on her shoulder.
After a while, a mechanical clapping sound broke the stupor. Silently aware of the ongoing conversation between Four, Five, and Eight - and the following amusing attempts to converse with the Negative Time God using sign language - Six and I simply stood there as a spherical spacetime distortion enveloped us all in the blink of an eye.
Eight had somehow managed to strike a deal with the magnetic compass - apparently a Field Wielder very close to becoming an Infinite Being. Toki-minus is a spirit born of people's desire to revert time (very Noragami of BOTSAMA's world in my opinion) and consequently gained powers related to spacetime. Initially able to only grant small wishes like going back a minute or two, it is now able to slow down and stop time within a spacetime bubble - and go back a thousand years in a single timeline at once.
"Huh," Five said with a chortle, "Then - just go back in time and start anew!"
Eight facepalmed, "That's - not how it works, Four - their entire universe is collapsing. It would collapse even if they go back a billion years."
Suddenly, Four, as if acknowledging and/or realising his brother's playfulness even by a tiny bit, says, "Brother – When a sparrow is tired of apples, it can't just switch to oranges - unless there's a tree nearby."
Eight expectorated with a guffaw while Five, using 120% of his brain-power to try make sense of his twin's words, said, "That… must be something deep, I guess?"
Six and I somehow fought vehemently against our lungs trying to expunge every air molecule inside it in an egregious chortle and ended up just smirking.
Anyway, so then, Eight somehow managed to convince it to let us go back in time - since it's meaningless to just stand in the void and do nothing. Losing five of the nine Agents (he didn't count Zero since he couldn't rely on him) - the most powerful Field Wielders in the universe - in the other side of causally isolated spacetimes just because they went on an interstellar concert tour doesn't fill well with Eight's sense of responsibility. It's understandable.
But the ability to enter a causally isolated spacetime by reversing time using the Field, which itself was caused by the Field, makes the physics much more complicated… And that also means Sherlock's way or reversing time isn't the only way… Oof, that makes it even more complicated… I have to redo my entire Theory of Everything from scratch! Damn you, BOTSAMA!
Anyway - in three jiffies (literally, Jesse, I mean it! It's a real thing! A jiffy is the time taken by information to travel one femtometer!), we found ourselves on the moon.
I opened my eyes and looked around, it looked like the Sea of Tranquility. I saw all of us half-levitating on the moon's surface, due to its low gravitational pull. But something seemed wrong to me.
At that moment, I realised something - Agents don't require special suits to breathe in vacuum!
I realised why I didn't need an astronaut suit in outer space a month ago!
I didn't really notice it when we were just floating in the void a moment ago, as that image was still deeply imprinted in my mind. It probably happened in front of me before too, a month ago to be more precise - I don't remember it correctly because of the following events back then.
I asked Six later, and she just said, "I didn't really think much about it-"; Eight said a similar thing("I didn't really care that much about it") and so did Salai ("Oh, that? That happens naturally to Agents.")! That means it's a unique thing that all Agents can do unconsciously!
See, Jesse, today (or more accurately, the previous day) - despite being… deeply traumatic - was a treasure trove of new information to me. I am so excited right now - I can't wait to get my hands on the keyboards and write a new thesis. That's probably why my style of writing is slightly different in this entry.
Once again, coming back from another tangent-
At once, I jumped around in wonder because it was my first visit to the moon. I looked up at Earth, a swirly mess of interlaced white and blue patches glittered with greenish hues.
Then, as I stared, I saw sizzles of dark hazel-brown splotches flare up around (at least that's what it looked like from the moon) the Karman Line and the patches of clouds turned into sakura-coloured gashes of red-and-yellow glitter. At the very next moment, like dropping a drop of concentrated acid into basic phenolphthalein - all the clouds covering the planet disappeared and a slightly scarlet shade could be seen replacing them. A long, golden rod appeared out of nowhere and covered the entire diameter of the planet as it swirled around a giant, aquamarine anthropomorphic robot while a photon beam as large as the Yucatan peninsula zapped out of the planet, with a horned giant riding at its edge. In an instant, the two giants - the robot and the goat - disappeared and a visible (yes, visible from the moon, Jesse) torsion appeared above Earth as they lunged at each other, gradually descending to the ground.
Then, amidst all this utter chaos, I felt two things at once - a similar, strikingly invasive pressure drilling into me, and a faint smell of boiled tea. And apparently, everyone around me felt the same.
Eight made a decision and said telepathically, "Let's go to Rome - something's going on there."
At this distance, it did appear that all of this - the long rod, the photon beam, the centre of the circle devoid of clouds as well as the sizzling flares of hazel-brown liquids - originated from the City of Seven Hills.
The picosecond after Eight finished his words - the world went null.
A very familiar feeling resonated within me - complete loss of senses, dizzily bright white light even in slight movement, total stillness and absolute nothingness.
I smirked in anxiety, "Who stopped time again?"
I quickly went through the options - not Tokiminus (it specifically mentioned that it can't stop time), none of the Agents (excluding Zero, he can do anything), none of the other Field Wielders from this universe (The League would have known of it) and…
Alright, I did make some assumptions, okay? But they were essentially deductive reasonings based on what I know - so I am pretty sure it counts.
The highly magnified pressure meant the presence of BOTSAMA's Realm Collapse, which directly implies the presence of BOTSAMA - but it (probably) does not have the power to stop time, so I can rule it out.
The smell of tea meant the presence of GOATSAMA - but he does not have the power to stop time, so I can similarly rule him out.
That long golden staff looked like the mythical Jingu Bang to me… but Sun Wukong can't stop time, can he? Probably not.
Then my mind went back to the original time-stopper, Sherlock - it is possible that he's here to deal with a multiversal catastrophe of a battle between two (most likely) Binary Infinite Beings.
Golly? Nah, she's just a baby with no control over her powers whatsoever - moreover, I did hand her over to Two like ten minutes before we turned on the GameBox. I wonder what she's doing right now… I hope she's safe…
I was thinking of all the possibilities when I felt someone poking at my shoulder.
Bewildered, I turned around to see a smiling old man looking at me. He looked like an ancient sage from legends - holding a long, curved wooden stick, a shriveled wizard hat adorning his long gray hair that merged with a similarly coloured beard, and a rather wise yet amused smile caressing his cheeks.
"Hello, I am Merlin." He introduced himself.
"Uh…" I stuttered, having randomly met a mythical creature in stopped time, "Hello…? I am Nine, the Agent of Love… Um… What exactly is going on with this time-stop…? Did you do this?"
His eyebrows went up in a mix of amusement and surprise, "Indeed - your intelligence is not exaggerated, Nine. I am a Tertiary Infinite Being - I am Knowledge or, in modern terms, Information. I have temporarily halted universal exchange of information from the very quantum level, thus stopping time by…"
"...Preventing the collapse of quantum wavefunctions, thus causing no change in their states - on a universal level - leading to the halting of all cause-and-effect chains, THEREFORE STOPPING TIME!" I yelled in an ecstatic eureka moment, "That's… genius!"
Merlin chuckled. "Absolutely correct," He said, "I needed time to come up with a strategy of dealing with two Binary Infinite Beings battling across existence, to mediate with the Monkey King and the cyborg who are trying to stop them… and to deal with the sense of humour of a certain farting god."
I guffawed, "I… completely understand your dilemma, especially the last one. What's "The God Who Farted" doing in the middle of this multiversal crisis? Just chilling and having pizza? That's very Sensei-like."
"That's… absolutely correct - again!" Merlin said in amused exasperation, "You understand him very well - alright then, c'mon, he wants to see you. Here, you are now able to use Drive again - I mean, you could have simply overridden me and used it anyway, because-"
"Shhh!" A certain voice appeared with a swoop – a pizza in his hand and a smirk on his face, "No, amice! No! Not yet! There are still seven cours left after this one! Still 392 chapters left to go! We haven't even started yet!"
"Um, Sensei?" I said with a smile, trying to understand the profundity of his statements, "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, Nine," Zero said, with a shrug, "Nothing, nothing. Ite, ignore what I am saying – Oh?"
Abruptly, Salai interjected and interrupted his own statement.
"Bene, bene, bene," He said with a strange-yet-similar smile, "Initium est."
I queried to understand his cryptic words, "What has started?"
"Secundus Gradus Evolutionis - oh, you don't have to worry about that, Nine," Salai chuckled, "You will know what I mean in due time."
"Um, okay… I guess?" I replied with even more confusion convoluting in my face.
Alright, Jesse, what do you think he means? He told me "First Stage of Evolution finit" a month ago, and now he says that my "Second Stage of Evolution" has started? What Evolution is he talking about?
No, it's useless to ask him - he would just ignore me and say, "Oh, you'll know in due time."
Anyway, then, he looked at me and snapped his fingers.
Just then, my senses recovered and I could see, hear, and feel everything.
Don't ask me how I was having a full conversation with those two in stopped time where I couldn't sense anything but still hear and see them perfectly – logic doesn't apply to gods, it's futile to even think, Jesse. Trust me, I have tried.
"Time hasn't resumed - yum, esculentus - Information ain't flowing - damn, this is too good - I am just returning your senses," Salai said while taking a bite out of his pizza.
"Uh… huh? How does that work…?" I said, curiously, "How can I sense anything when there's no information being shared at the very quantum level?"
"Well," He replied, "Because ego wished it so."
Um, okay - that's your logic there, Jesse. Happy now?
Then I heard his fingers snap again and the three of us were standing on top of the Colosseum – and in the skies above, two titans - a horned human, and an anthropomorphic robot - stood frozen in their battle. I turned around and saw Sun Wukong lunging at GOATSAMA's gigantic form with his Jingu Bang, apparently stopped in the middle of a yell. On the other side, Thena stood with her right arm stretched out, with a full-spectrum photon beam with a humongous diameter radiating out of it - frozen in time.
Zero said with a sigh, "Nah, too much work - the primary target has been achieved so I guess I don't need them now. Vos, evanesce! (Y'all, disappear!)"
Then, at once, all of them disappeared.
Yup, Jesse, just like that. He casually erased four Infinite Beings from the universe like they were figments of my imagination or something.
"Don't worry, Nine, they aren't dead," Salai said with his ever-so-peculiar smile, "They have just gone back to their worlds - recuperating from their bellum. Sherlock's dealing with the multiversal effects of their Realm Collapses, so I don't really need to fix it. Relax."
Um… okay?
A billion things went through my head as I started processing what just happened, "What about the rest of the Agents? And Two? And wait - if you did just stop them and send them back to their worlds, what about the causal isolation that occurred? Also, what about BOTSAMA and his attempt to attack us in the future? What should we do now? Eight will want some answers from you, and the League of Life-"
"Oh, right, you've got a point there, Nine," He said nonchalantly, and cryptically, "I can't really cause changes in the timeline and make it branch - a certain person has barred me from doing that. Ita, I guess I will just causally isolate this part of the universe till Two finishes fighting that AI in the future - don't worry, he will be fine, he can defeat him. Just go back to Welima'q and sleep."
"B-but!" I stuttered, "Why didn't you prevent this if you knew that this was gonna happen, Sensei? Did you know this was gonna happen? And who the hell are you talking about? There is something more powerful than… you?"
He replied, after taking the last bite out of his pizza and rubbing his hands clumsily, "It's not fun that way; ita; 'can't say it right now; can't say it right now either - respectively. We wouldn't have a story if the overpowered guy solves everything - now, would we?"
"So…" My lips fumbled as I tried to process everything, "There are limits… to even god himself?"
"Deus non sum," He replied calmly, "There is no god - but goddamn I wish there was one! Anyway - just chill for now. See ya later, Nine."
At the very next millisecond, I found myself in the hotel room in Welima'q with Six - the broken GameBox and the controllers laying on the ground.
Tell me… what exactly am I supposed to feel right now, Jesse?
Traumatised because I saw (and got to know) my greatest fear? Relieved because all the chaos is over for now? Sad because now I know that I am but a puppet of the events surrounding me and that reality is meaningless? Happy because I am now aware of all that and now I can find a new and true purpose for my existence? Frustrated because a pizza lover of a god knew that all this trauma and suffering was gonna happen and he didn't stop it because it wasn't fun? I can't even start to fathom… I need time to process everything, Jesse.
Alright, this entry is getting too long - almost as long as that one a month ago.
Let me summarise in short - Two appeared soon and told us that he defeated BOTSAMA's clone but it mysteriously vanished before he managed to capture it. He told us to just relax and sleep… and we did exactly that (I wrote to you before going to sleep, but you know what I mean). Six does not appear as traumatised as me, unless she has somehow become a perfect actor - which is highly unlikely, knowing her furious fits. I… couldn't really confess what I saw to her, as I didn't want her to worry about me.
But anyway - that was anticlimactic. I dunno what's gonna happen today. I have no idea what's going on in this crazy, meaningless world.
Anyway, Jesse, that's all for now. Limey's waiting for me at the Hanging Gardens. He wants to talk. See you at night, Jesse - bye!
Next Chapter: An Ephemeral, Wholesome Volcano