-Gravity is a Lie-
—
No. No. No. No.
The world burns around me. I fucked up. Shit. Fuck. Shiiiit! How did this even happen?! I looked at my arms and the flames that continued to expel from them. It's not even fire. It's pure plasma. The air around my hands vibrating with pent up energy until it ignites. I'm setting the freakin' air on fire. The energy won't stop. It keeps pouring out of me, agitating all the molecules in the air until they light up and burn.
Fuck.
I didn't mean for this to happen. Was there no way to prevent this? Was this always fated to happen? A fixed point? That's bullshit. What...what was the point in everything I've done then?! Was everything just pointless? Will's death… Oh god Will…I'm so sorry…
My screams are downed out by the flames.
The world continued to burn around me.
--
I tried to find people. Survivors? Anyone? No. Everyone's long since been burned to ashes. I guess I don't have to see dead bodies at least? I don't remember much about what happened. Everything just…started burning. The ground, the sky, the people…there were a few screams at first but they were quickly drowned out by the roaring flames.
I walked along down the flaming streets on the flaming ground. The fire is all I can hear. It's unnerving. I hate this sound.
"I can't remember what happened in September~ When everything is gone, when it's dark and I'm alone~"
The song really didn't match my situation but I continued singing anyway. Anything to drown out that sound. It just kept going, consuming everything. Was it as hungry as I always felt? Maybe, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm thinking, what I'm trying to think?
"I just discovered, everyone was defeated by something really strong, it seemed very weird and wrong, it just doesn't belong, like it came from out of this world~" I changed the lyrics so they were more appropriate. It gave me something to do.
I'm so tired.
"I just remembered what happened in September, I'm the one who killed them all, I survived after the fall…"
Why aren't I burning along with everything else? Well, no…these flames…they're ME aren't they? I feel like I might be on the cusp of an epiphany. Some massive secret of the universe unfolding before my eye. And then I passed out before I fully understood.
--
I admit I felt a little better when I woke up…who the fuck knows when, later. That's…good? I can think a little clearer. Man, being sleep deprived is awful. I walked along some more, don't even know where I'm going, what I'm looking for. What the hell am I standing on? I try to feel the ground but there's nothing there but more fire. Great. Wonderful. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I passed out again.
--
How long has it been? I hug my legs to my chest and sing quietly. It feels like weeks. How was the fire still going? How was I still alive?! The energy surging around my body hasn't stopped so I guess that's why the world still burns.
"Oh little ripper boy where did you go~ Where did you run when they burned your home~"
I blink up at the sky. It's nothing but blue flickering flames, the same beautiful color of Will's bricks. I don't even know what I'm sitting on considering there's no ground anymore. The fire brushes against my bricks in a warm tingly feeling. How long has it been?
"What did you say when they took your soul~ Poor little ripper boy all alone~"
I raged, despaired, apologized, passed out, woke to cry non-stop until I passed out again and raged some more until I just got tired of it all and just defaulted to singing every song I knew to pass the time. The whole stages of grief. Just skip right to acceptance. I think I cried for several days straight, or something. Not like time really fuckin' matters here. I wasn't even upset anymore. I was too weary to be. Bill Cipher will always destroy his homeworld. Even if I'm not technically him, it was gonna happen anyway. Right? It's not like there was anything I could FUCKING do to stop it. I sob a bit more before going back to my song.
"Still in the darkness, blind in the light~ Roll up the day and turn into night~Run at the sound of the siren's call to a watery grave where you'll find them all~"
Irony, there is no water here. Only fire, fire and…ooh what's that? More fire. I laughed and laughed until it devolved into screaming before I abruptly stop and calmly start singing again. I'm fine. Definitely Fiiiiine~ Yup yup. I wish Will were here. He'd listen to my jokes. He'd laugh along with me. We could just laugh together. Laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh- I passed out again.
—
I think I might have gone mad for a bit, luckily I seem to have gotten over it now. I think? I hope? I no longer feel the need to just laugh hysterically for no reason so I'm going to assume it's passed.
I continue to vibrate with energy. Can't really go anywhere like this huh? If I tried to leave I'll just set another place on fire. I frown. Enough moping around. Even if I fucked this up doesn't mean I can't learn from this mistake. What's done is done. I should focus on controlling my energy output so this sort of thing wouldn't happen again.
I had no idea how to go about turning this off…you'd think getting transformed into some kinda of a nuclear power cell would come with the knowledge of how the fuck that works. Wasn't Bill supposed to be All Knowing? Well I don't know shit. I tried breathing exercises. I tried meditation, which was super hard, how am I supposed to calm my thoughts under these circumstances?! How am I even alive? How have I not burned up along with the rest of this world?
Nothing seemed to work. I just had so much energy. Where the hell was all this even coming from? Wasn't energy something that couldn't be created? I tried everything I could think of from all the shows I've watched and stories I've read but nothing worked. I know it has to stop sometime. Canon Bill obviously got this under control so I should be able to do so as well. Come on, turn off! Turn off! Turn it off, like a light switch~Just go click! It's a cool little Mormon trick~ God dammit brain! This was NOT the time!
Maybe I was coming at the problem from the wrong angle (Ha! Shape puns! I tried to laugh but just end up sobbing instead). Instead of stopping the outflow of energy, what if I reversed it? Suck all this energy back inside myself. It wouldn't save this dimension, everyone was long since dead but it would put out the fire. I focused on feeling the energy around me and tried to...pull it back in. My breathing exercises now included the intent of sucking in the flames around me. I hummed a soft melody to help me focus. Staying well away from the Book of Mormon this time. It was really inappropriate for this situation.
Mind over matter, literally. If I believe this will work then it will work. I repeat that to myself and continued sucking in deep gasps of air (plasma?) And it might have been my imagination but it was working?
It felt like hours of just breathing despite not having a mouth or lungs but I finally felt a change. I was feeling warmer, the fire looked smaller. I was tingling all over. It felt really weird but I kept going. Breathe in and hold it. Breathe in again and hold it. The tingling feeling was getting worse. It was uncomfortable. I can't stop now. Come on! I can do this. In and out. Hold it in.
I gasped as the uncomfortable feeling devolved into nausea. I gagged and laid down but didn't stop. The fire was definitely dying down. It was working. I had to keep going. The flickering flames seeping into the seams between my bricks. My breathing was no longer a calm in and out. I was gasping, trying so hard not to throw up, I know I can't but I just felt so sick. My body was vibrating harshly. Shit. Was I doing this wrong? Am I going to accidentally kill myself? Will I explode? Will my molecules be torn apart from each other? A part of myself realized I was glowing blindingly but most of my focus was on the sensation of more and more energy being crammed back inside my small form.
It was beginning to hurt. Stop! Stop! This was a bad idea! What the hell was I thinking?! How do I make this stop?!
I was screaming now. Twitching and spasming and screaming without a mouth. My eye watered and my tears were reduced to steam and flame the instant they formed. The heat was intense. I was burning. I saw one of my arms as I thrashed and it was buzzing and splitting apart. Dear god I was really going to die again. As much as I deserve it I was still scared, I don't want to die like this! I'm so scared! My body continued to suck up all the energy around me. Like I had put the thing to autopilot and now it didn't know how to stop. It hurts. Please. No more. I'm sorry. I don't know what I did but I'm so sorry. Please make it stop!
And then I exploded.
--
Quarks flew around, hitting, smashing and clicking together. Protons and neutrons being built from the ground up. A cloud of electrons floating freely until they're pulled in. What would be known as Hydrogen was formed. Helium was formed. More bouncing. More connecting. More and more matter formed. Energy can be turned into mass. More mass. More energy. Bouncing and bouncing within a void.
So many particles. Bleeding off me as I floated listless in a void. How long has it been? I can't think clearly. A massive headache pounding behind my eye.
I feel each of my particles. I felt them as they sprinkled out from my body. I felt them move around until they clicked in place with each other. I felt them forming into something new as they bonded together. More protons clicked together, atomic mass was increasing. A new element formed.
They were me. They were all pieces of me. I could feel them all. Tiny parts of myself falling off myself, connecting to other parts of myself. I could feel them all. It was like if you could still feel sensations from every skin flake that you shed. I shivered. It felt strange. I was spread out, in pieces in all directions. I was everywhere.
I could feel larger clumps of me being pulled together, drawn to each other into a swirling mass. I eye the clump, still half dazed. It compressed, drawn tighter and tighter together until the energy running through it ignited. A large white flaming ball of plasma. A star. Pieces of me had become a star. I watched in fascination. It was quite pretty if I didn't think about the fact that it was literally pieces of myself burning. I suddenly realized that the reason clumps of me were drawn to each other was due to some subconscious desire to pull myself together. Dear lord, gravity's a lie.
All around were clumps of myself condensing into stars that burned and died, exploded into space dust and repeat. Over and over. I had trouble thinking clearly. How many thousands of years have gone by? So much of me being spread out in this expanding space. It was hard to keep track of time. Then I felt something that wasn't just more of me. Something different. It was moving through my space dust. Swimming through the void, brushing my particles aside as it headed in my direction.
I tried to shake myself into awareness so I could see what this entity was. My eye met with a large white and pink creature. It stared at me and I stared back.
"FINALLY! Where the hell have YOU been?!" I screamed at it.
I felt myself fully 'wake up' for the first time in what may have been eons. It was the AXOLOTL. Finally! Maybe I can get some answers outta him. The pink creature continued to silently observe me.
-You do not appear surprised to see me?-
They weren't words in any language. They weren't sounds being spoken. Instead I simply FELT the meaning of his question go through me.
"Well...I might have been under the impression that you were God or something."
-A god? Perhaps. But that concept doesn't fully encapsulate what I am.-
The creature swam around, examining me.
-We have never met. How did you come to know of me?-
"What? You don't know?"
-I only knew that the 2nd dimension had been destroyed and with its death came a great rebirth.-
"Yeah, I kinda realized that around the time the me-dust stated turning into stars and shit."
-Indeed.-
The AXOLOTL gazed at me as I swore angrily at myself. I fucked up again. Of course I shouldn't know who he was, we've never met, I have never found any writings to indicate his existence. Should I just tell him that I knew about him from a cartoon's expanded universe in another reality? That sounds stupid even thinking it.
-It does not matter how you know me. I only need you to listen.-
"Are you gonna explain what the hell happened to me?"
-You have destroyed an entire dimension and were the catalyst to the creation of a new one.-
"Well yeah, I know THAT much. What am I supposed to do now? What dimension is this now?"
Please don't let this be the nightmare realm. That would suck.
-You are free to do as you please, you birthed this new reality. As for what it is, I believe that as an evolution of the 2nd dimension, this is now the 3rd dimension.-
"Oh fuck really?! You mean...Earth and humanity will exist here someday? Wait! Earth and humanity are gonna form out of my space dust?!"
The AXOLOTL merely watched me. His salamander face giving away none of his thoughts.
"....ew...that's kinda gross to think about..."
-You speak of Earth and humanity. Things that do not yet exist and will not come to be for many eons yet. You knew what I am despite never having learned of me…-
He leaned right up close to 'me'. I didn't exactly have a real body at the moment.
-Who are you? You are not merely a Flatlander. You know things you should have no knowledge of yet.-
"Yet? So you mean I get the All Knowing gig at some point?"
He narrowed his eyes (which, if I must say looks super funny on an axolotl) and stared through me. Oh crap, is he gonna find out...
-You...are not who you are supposed to be.- the AXOLOTL jerked back in surprise. Shoot. Busted.
"Yeah its a funny story..."
-But at the same time, you cannot be anyone BUT the one you should be.-
"It's complicated."
-Explain?-
"Only if you help me learn to control my powers so this-" I gesture to the space dust around us with my nonexistent arms "-doesn't happen again."
-It was fated to happen. In order for the 3rd dimension to be created, another dimension would be sacrificed.-
"Really?! Who the hell decided that?"
-It was the fate laid out by the Time Giants at the dawn of creation. For what its worth. I'm sorry you had to lose your home.-
I was right! It really WAS a fixed point. Goddamit. I was angry for a bit but I couldn't keep it up. It's been far too long and I just don't have it in me to stay mad. I'm just…tired. And sad. Everyone died because of this. Because of me. Because I was supposed to kill them all.
"So is that going to happen to this dimension too someday? It's gonna be destroyed so a new dimension can be created?"
-Yes.-
"Huh. Well can you teach me to control my powers so that wouldn't happen by my hand anytime soon?"
-That is fair. And in return you will explain how it is that you both ARE and AREN'T who you're supposed to be.-
"You're shocked that I knew you, but how do you know me?"
-I have seen through many alternative realities. In all there will be a Bill Cipher in some shape or form. His existence is as inevitable as my own. Though what role he plays differs each time.-
"So what am I to you? In this dimension?"
-You were to be my counterpart. Created through fire and tragedy to be my opposite and equal in power.-
"So me knowing you throws off that plan?"
-It matters not in the end. You are still my opposite. I merely wish to know who you are for the sake of my own curiosity.-
"Guess even giant space salamanders get curious. Well sit yourself down and let me tell you a tale~"
It didn't take too long to explain my situation. He handled it pretty well all things considered. He also explained to me what it meant to be his counterpart and how to control my powers. It took a very long time to learn. Good thing I had so much of it.
--
My cosmic duties as it were, was to embody the opposite of what Ax was. Order vs Chaos. Reality vs Dreams. Wisdom vs Knowledge. Life vs Death. Creation vs Destruction. Hope vs Despair. I was afraid that the fact my personality was kinder than the Bill Cipher he was expecting would cause a few problems. There was no way I would just randomly destroy a planet (on purpose). And while I am a bit of a sadistic bitch at times, I don't feel right hurting innocent people. When I told Ax this, he laughed and said I didn't need to. Destruction came in all forms and I don't really have to go around killing people if I didn't want to.
That was a relief.
Ax taught me how to change my projected form (the Me as I am now was nothing more than my consciousness, my physical body had been burned away to create the universe after all) and how to manipulate the physical world. Manipulating the physical world was difficult. Just cause the world is made of 'me' didn't mean I could control it at will. Ax assured me it would get easier with practice but I would never have full control over it unless I punched a hole in space time to descend back into the physical plane. I asked if I was in the Mindscape right now and he said yes. With the Mindscape would come the Nightmare Realm. I wasn't looking forward to that. Even if I would have full control while there.
He taught me how to 'open' my eye to truly see anything and everything. Omniscience would have driven me insane if I'd still been human. By some miracle I got out of that lesson perfectly fine. Ax told me it was because I was already insane. Not sure how to feel about that. In the end I just shrugged and moved on. My 'Eye' could see everything happening everywhere all at once but I can't retain anything from it. It's like watching a million videos at once, just 'cause I can see it doesn't mean I know what the heck I just saw. Depictions of myself actually limit my vision, narrow it down so I can finally focus on what I'm looking at.
At some point Ax took me to meet Time Baby, the last member of our little TriForce of cosmic powers. Time, Space and Energy/Matter. Or rather, Fate, Life and Death. (I am become Death, destroyer of worlds) The meeting did not go well. I might have set that part of the solar system on fire. In my defense, HE started it.
I feel bad that Ax has to put up with us.
--