Rod's library wasn't a library in the traditional sense—it was a gravity-defying sphere of glass and brass that floated somewhere between three dimensions and a stubbornly persistent fourth.
Shelves spiraled into impossible curves, books anchored to reality only by thin threads of quantum glue.
The floor was optional.
The air smelled like ozone, old paper, and faintly… cinnamon?
Rick stepped in and immediately squinted, as if the whole place was judging him.
"Wow," Rick muttered, hands in pockets, "you've really gone all out with the whole 'I'm smarter than you, but also probably insane' aesthetic."
Rod ignored the jab, striding toward a tall metal pillar in the center of the space.
"Cortana," he said, with the casual authority of someone talking to a slightly snarky AI roommate,
"compile every research file, experiment, accidental breakthrough, hallucination, and drunken napkin doodle I've made about souls."
A soft chime answered, and then the space lit up.
Not a hologram—hundreds. Spirals of diagrams, equations written in light, microscopic cross-sections of what looked like glowing thread, all swirling around them.
Some were clear and detailed; others flickered between legible and "what the hell am I even looking at."
A few included tiny warning labels like MAY CAUSE TEMPORAL REGRESSION or DO NOT EAT.
Rick's eyes darted around, scanning a dozen projections at once, muttering under his breath.
"Huh. Soul as waveform, soul as memory lattice, soul as higher-dimensional core—yeah, yeah, I've seen most of this, done some of this, disproved a lot of this—oh, oh wait, nope, that's new… oh that's disgusting but genius…"
Rod smirked. "Glad to see something can still impress you, old man."
Rick pointed at one of the flickering projections, which showed a fractal pattern that looked suspiciously like a screaming face.
"Impress? No.
Horrify in a way that makes me wanna try it anyway?
Yeah, that's more accurate."
They moved through the swirling data, tossing theories back and forth like a game of catch played with live grenades.
"So your projection-and-soul-staff thing?"
Rod said, flicking his fingers to zoom in on a holographic anatomy chart of the 'Astral Nervous System.'
"We're skipping it."
Rick snorted. "Skipping? It was the best idea in the room."
"It was the only idea in the room because you never shut up long enough to hear anything else," Rod shot back.
"Besides, your plan destabilizes the time loop we need to survive going into the past. One false move and boom—we're both retroactively un-born.
I like my existence, thanks."
Rick tilted his head. "Yeah, well, that's the thing about existence—it's overrated until you lose it."
Rod ignored the quip and clapped his hands.
The holograms spun faster, compiling into a single glowing construct: a tower made of intertwining light strands, each marked with numbers and cryptic symbols.
"This," Rod said, "is the Soul Ascension Model. Seven levels.
Level one—you're basically a soul amoeba.
Level four—you can survive basic metaphysical turbulence.
Level seven—you could tell Death herself to wait in line."
Rick raised an eyebrow.
"Sounds like a video game skill tree for people who've read too much bad philosophy."
"Maybe," Rod said, grinning, "but it's the only way to make sure our souls are stable enough to dive into the past without unraveling.
And the fastest route?"
"Don't say it," Rick groaned.
"Becoming monks," Rod said, completely serious.
Rick squinted at Rod like he'd just suggested eating his own shoes.
"Wait—so, lemme get this straight.
We're talking… becoming monks.
Like robes, chanting, head shaving, incense up the nose—so we can 'level up' our souls like they're Pokémon stats?"
Rod's grin spread slow, shark-like. "Exactly. Except—skip the beans part."
"Beans?" Rick raised an eyebrow.
"Beans cause gas. Gas disrupts the soul aura."
Rick leaned forward, squinting harder. "That's not a thing."
Rod tilted his head. "It is now."
Rick pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Oh, god. We're in a sci-fi dimension with unlimited tech, and you're pulling some hippie D&D-meets-Buddhism cosplay?"
"Cosplay is an art form, Rick."
Rick rolled his eyes so hard he saw his own optic nerves.
"Fine. Let's go do your monk crap.
But if we end up in some Himalayan knockoff with zero Wi-Fi and a bunch of bald dudes asking me about inner peace, I'm tossing the abbot in a black hole."
Rod clapped once, the sound snapping reality into some other flavor of logic.
"Perfect! First stop—monk training grounds!"
Except "training grounds" wasn't so much a place as a fever dream with stage directions ripped from a dozen unrelated religions, half a cooking show, and something that might have been a sleep paralysis episode.
They started on a jagged cliff edge under a sky that had three suns and one moon that looked suspiciously like a poorly drawn smiley face.
Both sat cross-legged, chanting in a language Rod swore was "ancient and sacred," but when Rick squinted, the syllables were literally his grocery list read backward.
Two minutes later, they were in a sauna made of transparent crystal, steam rolling over their skin as they sipped neon-blue smoothies Rod claimed "purify your chakra frequencies by vibrating the molecules into sympathy with the eleventh dimension."
Rick took a sip, grimaced, and muttered, "Tastes like Gatorade had a baby with cough syrup."
Rod ignored him, moving on to "mind-juggling" chainsaws. "A true soul," Rod intoned while balancing one on his fingertip, "must find serenity in absurdity."
Rick held his own spinning chainsaw, expression deadpan.
"This is—this is dumb. Even for me. And my baseline is, like, quantum clown fiesta dumb."
Rod shushed him, pressing a finger to his lips. "Focus. Your soul level is rising."
"It's not a freakin' video game stat, Rod!"
"Not with that attitude."
From there, it spiraled into something that was either spiritual enlightenment or the world's most elaborate trolling campaign—Rick couldn't tell, and Rod wasn't helping.
First, they speed-read ancient cosmic scriptures while sprinting on anti-gravity treadmills, each treadmill powered by a hamster-sized star in a jar that screamed whenever you mispronounced a word.
Then came the underwater tea ceremonies with fish that whispered investment tips in currencies that hadn't existed for eons.
Rod swore it was "good for the soul's liquidity." Rick swore one of the fish was trying to sell him a timeshare.
They graduated to "silent karaoke" sessions—mouthing the lyrics to songs Rick didn't even like.
Rod claimed they were "songs the universe hums when it thinks no one's listening."
Rick argued the universe had trash taste. Rod countered that Rick's idea of good music was "basically an old fridge having a seizure in 3/4 time."
Then came the alien monks.
Seven eyes, each blinking in a different rhythm, draped in what looked like a living bathrobe that bloomed random flowers and occasionally burped.
These monks had them balance upside down on floating lotus pads while reciting tax codes from three extinct civilizations.
Rick slipped, almost falling into the pond below—until it blinked at him, revealing it was sentient and deeply offended.
"Yeah, great, I'll send the pond an apology card, Rod," Rick grumbled.Rod snorted. "Make sure it's waterproof, genius."
The cosmic endurance tests escalated.
A breath-holding contest inside a black hole "just shallow enough to not spaghettify your molecules if you believe hard enough."
A ritual slow-dance with sentient comets who wouldn't stop gossiping about the heat death of the universe.
For some reason, they ended up sitting under a waterfall—indoors—wearing tuxedos and eating deep-fried marshmallows.
Rick eyed the marshmallow critically. "This tastes like a raccoon's tax return."
Rod shrugged. "Exactly. Enlightenment."
It went on.
Climbing a staircase made entirely of their own regrets, except each regret was a talking toad that demanded a tip before you could step on it.
Playing chess against a cloud that only spoke in spoilers for events that hadn't happened yet.
Meditating inside a crystal chamber where your every thought appeared as floating subtitles in a language you couldn't read—but somehow knew was judging you.
He stopped, the annoyance shifting to something quieter, heavier.
"I guess part of me wanted to… y'know… make up for lost time. Didn't even remember you for so long."
Rod's grin softened. "You were busy being the Rickest Rick. Not your fault."
Rick's gaze narrowed. "Yeah, well, I still don't get when exactly you decided to—what was it—erase every Roderick Sanchez except yourself?
Real ego-friendly move, by the way."
Rod tilted his head. "Ego had nothing to do with it."
"Oh, please," Rick scoffed.
"You don't wake up one morning and go, 'Hey, you know what this multiverse needs? Less of me.'
You can always just erase other people...like I don't know, man, literally someone else?"
Rod smirked. "Actually, it was during the Great Lintstorm of Dimension R-Null.
Whole reality was collapsing into a ball of pocket lint the size of Saturn.
I realized… the others weren't me enough.
They didn't get the joke."
Rick blinked. "So you wiped them because they didn't laugh at your joke?"
"They didn't understand my joke," Rod corrected.
"Big difference."
Rick stared at him for a long moment, then snorted.
"Yeah, okay, fair. Still a dick move, though."
Rod grinned again, wide and unrepentant. "I'm still your son, remember. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree is true, old man."
Without another word, Rod flicked open a portal.
The air shimmered with the scent of old paper and cosmic dust—the smell of his library.
Rick sighed, stepped through, and muttered, "Next time, I'm picking the monk stuff."
"Sure," Rod said, following him in. "But I'm still in charge of the monk's food."
- - - - - - - - - -
Hours—or maybe lifetimes—passed in a surreal montage of monk-and-unmonk nonsense until Rod finally tapped Rick's shoulder.
"Alright," Rod said with a lazy grin. "Enough playing around."
Rick blinked. "Playing…? Wait. Wait, WAIT—you've been screwing with me this whole time? None of this—none of this was real training?"
Rod shrugged like a man who'd just tricked a genius into attending a clown college for spiritual enlightenment.
Rod's smirk returned. "Yeah. That's all this was. You think I'm dumb enough to believe in 'monk soul XP'? I'm not you, old man.
Please. I was screwing with you."
Rick froze, mouth opening, then closing. "You—wait—you— motherf—"
"Language, monk."
Rick jabbed a finger in his face. "Rod, you son of a—this whole time? You wasted my—You—ohhh, I am so retroactively spiking your tea with laxatives."
Rod chuckled, turning toward a swirling portal. "Library's waiting."
Rick's jaw dropped, then he cursed under his breath. "Unbelievable. I'm surrounded by cosmic idiots and I keep falling for it."
"Correction," Rod said, already opening a swirling portal, "you're falling with style."
They stepped through, landing in the quiet immensity of Rod's library—silent, still, and smelling faintly of burnt incense and bad ideas.
Rick stomped after him, still muttering curses under his breath.
Rick stomped after him, still muttering curses under his breath, and together they stepped through, back into the endless, dim corridors of Rod's vast archive of stolen, salvaged, and outright fabricated knowledge.
Rows of shelves stretched into a horizon that bent upward, like the library itself lived inside some colossal, inverted bowl.
The air carried that faint, dusty tang of paper and… something sharper.
Alien incense? Old monk sweat? Hard to tell.
Some aisles drifted sideways in defiance of gravity, spiraling into pockets of amber light where bookworms the size of couch cushions floated lazily.
"And now what, kid?" Rick's voice bounced off the shelves, low and annoyed.
"Please tell me you have a truly great idea, because I've had enough of the think-monks, alien soul-singers, and whatever that cosmic-chanting crap was.
I've still got sand in my ears."
Rod's laugh rang loud.
"HAHAHAHA! Relax, old man. That monk crap kinda helps. We both—no, I—need to unwind some stress, alright?
I thought I'd cracked the method to save Mom, then suddenly, cosmic-level screwball events.
How the hell does Mom, a normal human, remember all those times you tried to save her?
She should've been locked in that time loop. This is too damn complicated."
Rick's brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing like he was running through about nine separate equations at once.
"Maybe it's because that one moment happened too many times.
You hit a record skip, kid.
It's like the time point we picked wasn't atomically correct—yeah, yeah, temporal atoms, don't nitpick me—which means Diane already saw me try to save her.
So now she knows. We need a workaround, because the past that's been witnessed?
That's like graffiti on spacetime—it's a bitch to scrub off.
The clone we want to replace her with needs her exact memories, including the scattered bits of me being her would-be hero.
Which means—" He exhaled sharply. "Fuuuck."
Rod slumped against a shelf stacked with scrolls bound in translucent skin.
"It's okay, old man. That's just… additional steps. We can copy Mom's memory when we meet her, using our soul. Easy fix."
He tapped his chest twice. "The real problem is boosting your soul level.
Mine's high enough—level five. You? Not so sure. We need you at least level four before we try this."
Rick tilted his head, skeptical.
"So how do I crank up my soul level? Is this some voodoo crap? 'Cause I can do anything.
The only thing I can't do is—look, if this involves something with my butt, I'm out."
Rod blinked. Then frowned. Then stared. "…What the fuck, old man?"
Rick smirked. "What? Gotta cover my bases. Soul rituals are always either 'hold hands and hum' or 'stick something somewhere uncomfortable.'
Learned that from the Shrike Monks of Omega Nine. Whole cult ran on butt candles."
Rod pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning. "I'm begging you to never say 'butt candles' again."
They turned a corner, passing a table where a translucent monk sat cross-legged, chanting in binary while feeding ink into a levitating quill.
In the distance, a spherical fishbowl floated by on mechanical spider legs, whispering what sounded like stock market predictions in Atlantean.
"So," Rick said, side-eyeing a shelf labeled SOUL LEVELING — DO NOT LICK, "how'd you even get to level five?
Don't tell me it's, like, a CrossFit thing for your soul, 'cause I'm not—"
Rod leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other like he was about to give a TED Talk on
"How to Be Spiritually Better Than You."
"It's… complicated," he said, which in Rod-speak meant, prepare for a three-hour detour through insane metaphors and unprovable science.
Rick squinted. "Complicated like the quadratic equation, or complicated like why people still buy bottled water in the multiverse when—"
"Shut up, Rick. This one's actually important. Level five wasn't brute-forced. I didn't nuke a soul farm, didn't barter with afterlife debt collectors—"
"Pfft, amateur."
"—and I didn't absorb the life essence of thirty-seven monks from Vega-9, even though that would've been faster."
Rick groaned. "You're boring me already, Rod."
"Good. Boredom is part of it. Step one was creating the right mental architecture.
I built a mind space—no, not your sloppy brain palace full of half-remembered formulas and old trauma—mine's precise.
Fractal rooms. Infinite mirrors.
Every door leads to the same room, but each one gives you a slightly different emotional reaction to being there."
Rick tilted his head. "…So it's like a psychological escape room where the exit's a metaphor for dying content?"
"Exactly. But here's the thing—you don't just sit there and meditate. You live in it.
That's step two: the Life Simulator. Full immersion.
I've lived through entire civilizations in there.
Been a king, been a pauper, been a mushroom on a wet log for eighty years."
Rick raised an eyebrow. "Uh-huh. And what's that supposed to do? Give you the world's most boring autobiography?"
"It gives perspective," Rod said. "The kind you can't fake. Every role, every outcome, every mistake—it's stored as real experience.
Your soul doesn't care if it's a simulation. It just knows you've been through it."
Rick snorted. "Yeah, sure, because souls are famously tech-savvy. You hook yours up to a USB port yet?"
"I would if it made backups," Rod said without blinking. "Step three was the concoction."
"Oh great, here we go—"
"No, listen. It's not some magic potion. It's a biochemical-cosmic hybrid.
A drink made from distilled star stuff, fermented in an isolated pocket dimension where time loops back on itself every six seconds.
The flavor changes depending on your mood when you sip it."
Rick muttered, "Bet it tastes like horse piss when you're depressed."
Rod ignored him.
"One sip slows your perception enough that a minute feels like a week.
Combine that with the simulator and you're living lifetimes between heartbeats.
That accelerates the growth curve of soul resonance exponentially."
Rick tapped his lip, pretending to consider it. "Huh. That's… actually kind of clever.
Still dumb, but clever. So what, level five's just 'become a calm immortal who's seen everything'?"
Rod smirked. "Level five's when you don't need to react anymore. You stop trying to win every argument. You stop flinching when the universe calls your bluff."
Rick's voice dropped for a second, the sarcasm softening. "Yeah, but that's the problem, Rod.
You stop fighting long enough, you forget why you fought in the first place."
Rod didn't answer right away.
He studied Rick's face—searching for the crack under the layers of cynicism—and then said, "Maybe that's the point.
Some fights aren't worth remembering."
Rick looked away, muttering, "Yeah, well… not everyone gets to choose which ones to forget."
The silence stretched, awkward and heavy, before Rick abruptly slapped his hands on his knees.
"Alright, I've heard enough of your monk–slash–Starbucks–barista training program. Show me the damn simulator."
Rod grinned. "Hope you're ready to be a mushroom."
Rick groaned. "Ugh. This better not involve spore reproduction—"
"It does."
"Of course it does."
- - - - - - - - - -
Do you get any of that?
The process of enlightenment is hard, amitabha....bless Rick's soul.
I really wanna know how this simulator arc will end tho ;3