The void felt different after the others vanished. Emptier, but somehow more focused, as if all the cosmic attention that had been spread across all eight billion people was now concentrated on Sam alone. He stood in the endless white, notebook clutched against his chest like a shield, watching the familiar blue screen flicker to life before him.
But this time, only one word appeared.
"Why?"
The voice that accompanied it was familiar yet fundamentally different—still that same emotionless tone, but now carrying undertones that suggested vast intelligence, ancient amusement, and something that might have been genuine curiosity.
Sam managed a wry smile despite his racing heart. This was it—direct contact with the entity that had just reshaped reality itself. His mind came up with a thousand questions, but he forced himself to focus.
"Curiosity," he answered simply.
"I see."
The pause that followed seemed to stretch forever. When the entity spoke again, Sam could have sworn he heard amusement in that cosmic voice.
"Abstaining from making a wish... didn't your scientific hunger drive you to wish for knowledge? For answers to the questions that have plagued your species?"
"That's exactly why I didn't," Sam said, his academic instincts finally overcoming his awe. "Any wish I made would have been based on my current understanding, my current limitations. But this—" He gestured at the screen, at the void around them. "This is unprecedented. I needed to see what variables I hadn't accounted for."
"You treat this as an experiment." The entity's voice carried what might have been approval.
"Isn't it?" Sam challenged, supressing his fear. "You didn't do this randomly. You chose our planet for specific reasons, observed specific variables. What were you testing? How many worlds have you done this to? What were the results?"
The silence stretched so long that Sam began to wonder if he'd overstepped a boundary. Then the entity spoke again, and this time the amusement was unmistakable.
"You're an interesting specimen, Samuel Keaton. Very well. I shall offer you what your abstinence has earned—three questions, and I will answer them as completely as I am able."
Sam's hands trembled as he opened his notebook, pen poised. This was the opportunity of several lifetimes—direct access to a cosmic intelligence that had casually reshaped the Earth.
"Where do you come from?" he asked, his voice steadier now. "What are you?"
"I am not from your world. I am what your species might one day become, if you survive long enough. When you can travel between the stars, then perhaps then you will find others like me."
Sam scribbled frantically, trying to capture every nuance. The implications were staggering—aliens existed, there is intelligent life beyond Earth and they are immensely powerful.
"Why?" he asked for his second question. "Why give humanity this opportunity? What do you gain from reshaping our world?"
"The same thing that drives you humans to study the behaviour of creatures in your laboratories," the entity replied, the amusement was tinged with something darker.
"Curiosity. Entertainment. The desire to see how intelligent beings behave when all their assumptions are stripped away. Your species is young, chaotic, unpredictable. You make for... fascinating subjects."
The words sent a chill down Sam's spine. They weren't just experimental subjects—they were entertainment for beings so advanced that reshaping worlds was casual amusement.
"Who are you?" he asked for his final question. "Not what you are, but who. What should I call the entity that changed everything?"
"You may call me Progenitor Zhi."
The moment the name was spoken, Sam convulsed.
Pressure crashed down on him like the weight of galaxies. The universe itself seemed to recoil from the name. His vision blurred, his lungs burned as his tried to breathe.
Then it passed, leaving him gasping and shaking, but alive.
"Forgive me," Progenitor Zhi said, and for the first time the entity sounded almost... apologetic. "I sometimes forget how fragile young minds can be. You asked for my title, and titles have power. Consider it a glimpse of what you might one day become—if your species survives its current transformation."
Sam tried to speak, to ask follow-up questions, to process what he'd just experienced, but the entity was already moving on.
"Your experiment has yielded results, Samuel Keaton. I will return you to your transformed world now."
The white light erupted around him, as his consciousness faded, Sam's last coherent thought was a mixture of terror and exhilaration.
He had answers. But more importantly, he began to understand just how many questions he hadn't even known to ask.
---
AJ had been walking for what felt like hours through the alien landscape when the world suddenly tilted sideways.
He staggered, the ground beneath him rippling. The air buzzed against his skin, thick with energy that felt invasive. Colours twisted and bled into each other, the transformed landscape warping in real time as if reality itself couldn't decide what shape to hold.
What the hell—
Then the pain hit.
It began in his chest—not agony, exactly, but a loosening that terrified him more than any injury ever had. The fundamental bonds holding his body together were dissolving, unravelling like a sweater caught on a nail. He tried to cry out, but his vocal cords were already changing, his voice becoming a wet, doubled sound that horrified him.
His bones didn't break—they simply stopped being solid. His muscles flowed like warm honey, his nervous system rewiring itself into patterns that felt alien. His skin became a membrane barely containing what he was becoming, and for one moment of pure terror, he thought he was dying.
This is wrong, his mind screamed as his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground. This isn't how it was supposed to—
Then his body settled, the strange feeling of his body liquifying was gone, everything was different.
He couldn't feel his heartbeat because he no longer had a heart. He couldn't feel his breathing because he didn't have lungs. What he felt instead was... flow.
The world looked the same, but he saw it from a very different perspective. He was small—a bit larger than a tennis ball—and the landscape that had seemed manageable now loomed vast and threatening around him. His new form was a translucent green, gelatinous, greatly resembling jelly.
But his mind... his mind was sharper than it had ever been. Not just enhanced by Victor's wish, but fundamentally different. He could sense things he couldn't have before, he could 'taste' everything, the air around him, the ground beneath him. However, there seemed to be a foggy layer between himself and the world around him, things weren't very clear.
He was now a slime.
A blue screen flickered into existence above him.
"Apologies for the delay. The transformation required... calibration. I wish you luck on your journey, Atlas Jovan."
The screen vanished, leaving him alone in his new existence.
AJ, he corrected automatically. My friends call me AJ.
If he still had friends. If they would even recognise what he'd become.
The first thing his enhanced senses detected was the presence of humans nearby—not his scattered teammates, but strangers. They were beyond a cluster of glowing plants, moving with purpose that suggested they had a predetermined goal.
His instinct told him to hide. In this form, he was vulnerable in ways he'd never experienced. No voice to explain himself, no recognisable form to suggest he was once human, no way to prove he wasn't some new threat spawned by the wish event.
Without thinking, he flowed into a crack in the transformed earth, his new body moving with fluid grace that felt both natural and completely alien. The sensation was indescribable—like being water that could think, a liquid with purpose and will.
I need to be careful, he thought, his consciousness now distributed throughout his entire form rather than centralized in a brain. They might see me as a monster. Hell, maybe I am one now.
But monster or not, he had promises to keep. His friends were scattered, probably confused and frightened. They trusted each other, willing to survive the wish event together, and he couldn't let them down just because he no longer had a human form.
The irony wasn't lost on him—he'd wished to become something that could adapt to any situation, and his first challenge was adapting to being himself.
As he flowed through the strange new landscape, AJ began to understand both the power and the terrible isolation of his transformation. He could survive almost anything now, but surviving alone wasn't the same as living.
He had to find the others. Had to prove that beneath this alien form, the person they'd trusted was still there.