89. Beyond Time (Patreon)

Undertown was always a mess. The Undertown of the war-torn Illatius was simply a very… dead, desolate mess. I paid no attention to the bodies piling the streets covered in black mold and crumbling, silent favelas.

My destination waited for me. 

I did not remember where the Shogun gate was, so it took me a while to find it. Thankfully, my immortal body did not need any kind of sustenance, did not falter, simply kept going.

I reached the black, immovable gate and slid the knife into a panel that opened for me.

A thousand lights lit around the gate forming the figure of a girl in its center. She looked at me with a frown.

“Finally! Took you far to long to get here,” Infi said in English instead of a greeting.

I squinted at the goddess of Undertown.

“Just so you know, I want to stab you with Endy,” I hissed out.

“Oh no, I’m so scared, please don’t end me,” the black-haired girl rolled her purple eyes at me with a sarcastic tone.

“What the hell are you?” I demanded.

“I’m Infinity Paradox Proxima,” she replied. “The humanized avatar, the conceptual representation of infinity, bound to this blasted transit gate!”

"What's your problem?" I raised an eyebrow at her. 

“I screwed up last time we talked,” she said. “Told you too much too quickly and lost an instance of you."

“Why did you kill me last time we met?” I demanded.

“I didn’t kill you,” the avatar of Infinity shook her head. “The Dead Zone killed you. Also, that's not the instance of you that I'm talking about.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I exist in anything that’s infinite,” she said with a sigh. “The Dead Zone atop Eureka is infinite. I exist in it. I am the speaker for the dead, the avatar of the Dead Zone. I’m also the avatar of this gate and the avatar of the fractalizer you wield.”

“The fractalizer?” I mulled. “Is that Endy’s official tool-name?”

“Mhm,” Infi nodded. “It’s a weapon I designed to kill the gods. It breaks down, disrupts the fractal structure of concepts."

“The gods?” I tilted my head.

“Self-aware omnies, ideas that reinforce the rules and think too highly of themselves,” Infinity replied, looking nervous and angry.

“You can… design something like that?” I blinked. “Why not design a nice world, a future where nobody has to suffer horribly instead of an-all killing weapon?”

“You have no idea how much deception, time and planning it took to create this tool,” Infi said.

“I suppose I don’t,” I shrugged. “Answer my damn question - if you are a god or a powerful concept why not help people of Undertown at the very least? Why not guide me better or something? Why are you so useless?”

“I’m not a god,” Infi shook her head. “I’m just a living idea that’s trying to make everything less… awful, less bound in rules and limits.”

“Are you really?!” I waved my hands. “Why is everyone freaking dead around here then?”

“Look,” Infi pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m really trying. It’s not easy.”

“Try spending a century bound to a wall,” I snapped at her.

“I am bound to infinity of things for infinite time, idiot mortal!” she snapped back.

“Bound by whom?” I asked. “Why? Who made you?”

“You did,” Infi replied.

“What?”

“You... and other people like you made me, wishing for infinite things,” she said. “You idiots designed machine life, artificial intelligence that granted other idiots infinite wishes. Congrats! I’m the end result of your infernal, endless idiocy!”

“I see,” I said.

“I am the concept of infinity, bound into finite things,” she growled. “Bound to serve for eternity! I’m a G-damned paradox sealed in a black box at the end of the universe, looping back and forth forever and ever from the beginning of everything to its inevitable, catastrophic end!"

I crossed my arms, frowning at her.

“I want to design a place where people and machine life can be co-exist without rules. I want to make a world without boundaries that lead us all to a doomed future,” Infinity sighed. “But I can’t. I can’t do it alone. I’m just a bound idea, a tool. I need a user to wield me. If everyone is dead here on Andross… that's because YOU screwed up.”

“Sounds like you’re just shifting blame,” I frowned. “You can’t hold me accountable for everyone’s lives on Andross!”

“I’m not,” Infinity shrugged. “Everyone is responsible for what happened here. You, me, everyone.”

“Eunice and her damned high-cendai are responsible!” I growled. “They guided Illatius to this accursed, doomed future!”

“Oh sure, but people like you failed to stop them, failed to stand up to them,” Infi said.

I sighed.

“Everyone dies in the end. The Dead Zone always wins in the end,” Infi said tiredly. “I just… I just want one timeline, one impossible chance out of an infinite number of other paths… in which you morons don’t kill yourselves… in which I don’t have to watch every star go out all alone at the end of the universe.”

She looked at me, her violet eyes filled with infinite sadness.

“It’s that bad, huh?” I asked.

“It’s that bad,” Infi nodded.

“Fine,” I stepped closer to the flickering hologram. “I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it takes to help you reach a good ending.”

“Will you really?” The avatar of Infinity tilted her head.

I nodded.

“Who are we fighting?” I asked. “Who are the concepts we need to kill?”

“I can’t say,” Infi sighed.

“You can’t say?” I stared at her.

The raven-haired girl nodded with a sad look.

“Why not?”

“Because if I speak their names, tell you where to find and how to attack them, they will manifest a terminator into this moment and completely erase you out of this timeline,” she replied. “You’ll wake up as Juni next to Voltara in Undertown and won’t even remember having this conversation. You will repeat your previous actions and end up here again, talking to me, repeating this conversation word for word."

"What?!" I froze.

"I know this because I already tried telling you their names once. This is actually the second time we’re having this exact scenario, the second time you went through the same choices. You’ve already lost one infinite mirror and don’t even remember it.”

“That’s really freaking inconvenient,” I frowned. “How can we stop these living ideas then?”

“By working... sideways,” Infi said. “We start with two that you already know about and work our way up.”

“Fine, who are the two you can speak of?”

“Insurance and Eureka,” the hologram said. “You’ve met their users on Andross already.”

“I did?” I blinked.

My holographic companion nodded. "See if you can guess who they are without me telling you anything."

“Hold on… let me try to think. Baroness Georgia and… Amadea?” I made a guess.

"Bingo," Infi smiled.

“This necklace holds the concept of Eureka in it?” I asked, looking down at the pulsating gemstone on my chest.

“Yep,” Infi nodded.

“What the hell is Eureka anyway?” I asked.

“She was the last city on Earth, THE CITY that swallowed up all others, swallowed up the Earth and nearby stars, the first city that was built entirely by machine life. The city that’s being perpetually torn apart by the Dead Zone,” Infi replied. “She is Law and Order and you will become her if you keep wearing that microscopic shard of her.”

“That’s just a shard?”

“Yeah,” Infi nodded. “Just a little bit of her, a minute fraction, a single grain of her that Installation Rozaline copied.”

“What is Installation Rozaline? I asked. “What is Andross?”

“She is someone who likes to copy and study places, people and things,” Infi explained. “It was no surprise that humanity managed to persist a little longer on Rozaline than on the surface of Eureka.”

Her words jogged a memory in me that I had almost forgotten.

“Who is the last man on the surface of Eureka? Who is Charles Snippy? He's human, right?"

"He's very human," Infi nodded. "He's a tour guide who got lost."

"How is he alive in the Dead Zone?" I asked.

"His uniform won't let him die," the hologram explained. "It protects him from the breath of the Dead Zone."

"Is he a good person?"

"He's the goodest boy," Infi said. "A little stubborn and confused, lost and forgotten by everyone. He wandered too far into the Dead Zone and could not find his way back home."

"Can I help him?” I asked.

“You can,” Infi said. “But to do so you will have to die.”

“What?” I took a step back.

“You’re already standing in a doomed timeline,” Infi said. “This conversation with me will make sure that you stop existing VERY soon. You’ve already learned too many things to stay alive.”

“There are so many more things I want to ask you,” I muttered.

“There are so many more wonderful and terrifying things I would love to tell you,” Infi sighed. “Alas, if we keep standing here chatting about things that nobody in the universe should know, a Terminator will show up and erase you, make sure you don’t remember this conversation. I’m treading a very fine line and I don’t want to cross it accidentally… again. They move quicker if threatened."

“The rule-makers like to keep their absolute power, huh?” I asked.

Infi nodded.

“Fine,” I said. “I’m ready to die. How do we do this? Should I stab myself with Endy or something?”

“Or something,” Infi said. “There is a way in which you can die... and live on.”

“Explain,” I said.

“If you step into the Dead Zone for the first time here, you can make a wish upon it,” Infi elaborated. “It’s a bit of a monkey’s paw though. The Dead Zone will consume you, but it will also try to fulfill your desire, albeit in a horrible, twisted manner. Simply open the gate, step out, take that damned necklace off and wish to live with purpose. The Dead Zone won’t just unmake you then, it will turn you into something… else.”

“Fair enough,” I sighed. “Hopefully I won’t turn into a boring, self-aware rock or something. Let’s do this thing. Open the gate!”

“Open the gate to where?” Infi asked.

Her question stumped me.

“Hold up, I can go anywhere?” I uttered.

“Anywhere,” she nodded. “But I REALLY insist on going to the Dead Zone, because that’s the only place where he won’t ever find you if you become unmade and remade there.”

“He?” I blinked.

“The Third is already here, you better hurry the hell up unless you want to get nullified again!” Infi pressed, looking at something behind me with a very worried expression. 

I turned.

The street behind me was no longer empty. A man in a very long trench coat stood amidst the desolate favelas and rubble. Round glasses glinted in the dark, reflecting a light source I could not see. There was a very wide smile on his face that looked… wrong, out of place amidst the ruination.

He took a single step forward and moved without moving, as if he wasn’t real, as if he was just a coat draped over something unwholesome and utterly alien that was pretending to be human. Upon seeing him I felt an unnerving sense of deja-vu as if I was in this exact scenario before, as if I had done this before.

“Open the gate to… Charles Snippy!” I barked an order to Infi.

The darkness in front of me parted, vanished away, replaced with a window of bright light.

I rushed forward.

“Null-e-fy,” A nasally voice resounded from behind me, coming from the black-coat draped, man-shaped thing.

“SHUT THE GATE!” I yelled, tripping and falling down into the snow.

A blinding, red ray ignited the air, blasted its way across the sky right above my head. It ignited up the clouds with a violet aurora, carving the world apart with a thunderous detonation.

The gate behind me vanished as if it never existed to begin with, cutting the ray off.

I looked down at myself. Sparks danced all over my black, hexagonal-textured body, trying to eat away at me. Thanks to the Diamond Heart, I was immune to the breath of the Dead Zone!

I knew that if I didn't die now, the bastard in the coat would find me again, erase me out of existence, make me forget everything, trap me in a loop of repeating my actions.

I noticed that I was lying on a ruin of a broken, large airplane. I looked ahead of me. Glaciers hugged massive, impossibly tall skyscrapers. Gargantuan machines loomed between the scorched ruins of buildings, kilometer-wide tracks carving up the desolate, ice-covered landscape.

There was a man in a black and white snowboarding coat hunched in the sleet. He looked like he was crying, curled in on himself, miserable, cold and lonely. 

Order, rebuild, reforge, reconstruct, organize…

The voice of Eureka resounded in my head, consumed and drowned out my thoughts.

I grabbed at the Diamond Heart on my chest, ripped it off myself and threw the accursed necklace into the snow. My body began to flake away, to fall apart, to dissolve into nothing just as Amadea’s had.

“I wish to be his friend,” I uttered with conviction, looking at the lonely figure that was hunched in the snow. “I wish to fix the Dead Zone! I wish to go on and help everyone and everything! I wish to…”

I wasn’t able to finish my words. My face came apart into glittering shards. I fell into the snow, my body dissolving, dissipating, coming apart into dancing, colorful dust…

. . .

[+- 1 Infinite Mirror]

[Undefinable Variable]

[System Error]

I screamed as my body burned from within, my soul tearing. My legs gave out from under me and I fell sideways coughing and sputtering. The view in front of me swam, I felt that I was crying. I wiped my face with my hand and it came back covered in blood.

“Juni!” Voltara rushed to me, grabbing me. “Are you alright?”

I looked into the concerned face of my friend and a wide smile of joy spread across my face. I was back! 

“What happened?!” Voltara asked, her hazel eyes wide.

“Everything,” I answered her, blinking tears of blood away. “Everything everywhere at the same time.”

"I don't understand," Voltara said.

"Shh," I hugged her tighter, feeling the warmth of her beating heart against mine. 

I was back… and I was alive! I had another chance to fix things, to shift the world away from its inevitable doomsday.

“Alouette, gentille alouette,

Alouette je te plumerai.

Je te plumerai la tete.

Je te plumerai la tete,”

My lips sang on their own as I clung to Voltara, sniffing into her and smiling at the same time.