It all began as a single point of light in the darkness. 

At least, that was what it seemed like. The light wasn’t sure what was going on, really. It had a vague sense that it was missing quite a bit, that it was actually something much more than a simple point of light; and for that matter, the flat empty darkness that surrounded it was much more than it appeared as well. But the light wasn’t sure what to do with that notion.

So, instead, it flailed about helplessly. It wondered, for a brief flickering instant, if a point of light could even pull off something like ‘flailing about’. But this thought was hard to hold onto, fading away, pulled apart into tattered fog before the light could even really taste it. All thoughts were like that, actually. Like….like….

The light was suddenly struck by the image of a bubbling, viscous liquid, desperately trying to form shapes, only for them to melt too quickly to make any sense of them. This seemed like a revelation. That’s right, thought the light, I’m not just a point of light. I’m a puddle. 

And the darkness, too, was grudgingly giving up secrets, unfolding into depth. Something, something large, was in motion around the puddle. One might even say it was looming. Yes, looming, thought the puddle to itself, as if it had the slightest idea what that meant. But whatever it was still seemed blurry and indistinct, like a large, looming, wobbling storm cloud. 

Things in the puddle’s immediate vicinity, however, were easier to perceive. It could tell that it was lying on a smooth, reflective surface. What’s more, the surface was not entirely flat. The puddle itself lay in some sort of basin. Once it realized this, the puddle of light was seized with the inescapable urge to spread itself out until it took on the shape of the basin it lay in. It just seems like the sort of thing a proper puddle like myself ought to do, it thought, as its edges began to ooze outwards. 

The shapes around the puddle seemed excited by this development - it could tell that they had begun to move quicker. And there was something a bit exciting about this new shape it was filling out into. It felt like the right shape. The puddle, in fact, was beginning to suspect that it was not actually a puddle at all. Suddenly, it could tell that the surface it was laying on was cold, and this opened up an entire new realm of sensation that it didn’t think it would have been able to handle if it was just a puddle. It stretched further into its new shape, and then it could hear sound, too - a sort of whirring, whining sound, accompanied by the occasional click. 

All this, though, was secondary, as far as the not-puddle was concerned. Its thoughts were becoming clearer, as it took on this new shape, and it knew what it was, it was right on the edge of its thoughts, it was…it was…

A man.

The man sat up in the basin he was lying down in. His form no longer fluid, he could now maintain his shape. And it was, he noted, a man-shaped basin that the puddle-he-had-been had filled out. Someone here must have left it as a helpful reminder of what he actually was, in case he ever became a puddle. 

The man paused for a moment, thinking. He had no memories to go by, still, but something about that struck him as wrong. He didn’t think that men normally became puddles. Also, he still felt as if something were missing. He was not so much a man as he was a man-shaped blob of light. I think I’m supposed to have skin, the man mused to himself. And teeth. 

Nevertheless, he clumsily stood up and stepped out of the basin - little more than a shallow indentation in a polished, silver surface - and looked around. He could see, now, what had been looming over him as he lay in the basin. It was a segmented, metallic stalk, about as tall as he was, upon the end of which rested a curious eyeball, which blinked at him. It was large as far as eyeballs went - nearly the size of the man’s head - and as he watched, it glowed several different colors, from green, to blue, to purple. It twisted itself around on its own - apparently very flexible - stalk, blinked again, and emitted a low chirping sound. 

The man opened his mouth to say something to the eyeball - what, he wasn’t sure. He mostly just felt the urge to make several guttural sounds indicating confusion. But, he realized, he had no voice. He wasn’t even sure if he had a mouth. He had the sensation that he had a mouth, certainly - but then again, he was still just a man-shaped blob of light. 

Troubled, he took a better look at his surroundings. The basin he had stepped out of was in the middle of a large, flat, metallic disc which, as he walked around it, appeared to be hanging in the midst of perfect darkness, supported by nothing. Several walkways extended from the disc, and the man could see other odd structures in the distance that lay along these. None of it made much sense to him. 

He returned to the center of the platform he stood on. The stalk-eye bobbed and waved as he approached, having watched him the entire time he had spent looking around. The base of its stalk lay in a small semi-circular track carved into the metal surface of the disc, and there were some sort of powered wheels that allowed it limited movement. The man looked sadly at the eyeball, wishing he could say something to it, even if it couldn’t answer back. It felt a bit lonely, here, without someone to talk to. 

It was out of sheer curiosity that he glanced up, realizing that he had not yet. He stared for a moment. It was dark above him, like everywhere else, but it was not an empty darkness. There was something there, something just barely concealed by the dark. If he could focus, he could just barely make it out…

Then the man saw what it was, and sheer terror gripped him. Nausea rolled through him, so strong that the edges of his being rippled, as if he might collapse back into a puddle. He would have screamed, if he had the voice. 

What hung above him in the darkness was a machine - the man wasn’t entirely sure what word meant, but he knew it applied to that thing - a machine, enormous, bigger than he could even determine, its vast bulk disappearing into the dark. He had only managed to glimpse a part of it, only just barely. But what little he had seen had been an assault on the senses - sharp, thin blades, too many of them, making the machine look like a vast, malevolent insect, and it had all oozed cruelty and sickness. 

Raw and ragged panic rising in him, the man stumbled away, he had to get away, had to get away from that thing.

He ran down one of the narrow walkways extending from the disc, wanting to sob, wanting to retch, but not knowing how. The walkways were not wide, and they did not come with any guardrails - and the man was so clumsy with panic that he came close to stumbling over the side, out into that endless black, where he had to assume he would fall forever. Still he ran, not knowing where he was going. His footsteps made no sound.

As he did, strange sights and sounds rushed past him in a blur. A towering pillar of rainbow-hued crystal, floating in the darkness off to his right, so tall that the top of it disappeared into the dark as well. Hundreds of glass orbs hanging suspended in the air like bubbles, jostling against each other gently, only visible because some of them seemed to contain miniature environments of bioluminescent fungi, flowers, and insects that glowed brighter as he ran past, as if in response. In one stretch, a strange, sad, lilting tune floated out of the dark, one that seemed oddly familiar, but which he did not stop to listen to.

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Finally, the panic in him subsided. He didn’t know how far away the machine was - for all he knew, it extended everywhere in the darkness above him - but, turning back and looking up, he could no longer see it. He could no longer see any of the things he had run by on the way, in fact. The darkness had swallowed them up.  

Where he was now was in the midst of another platform. But there was no man-shaped basin, here, and no chirping eye-stalk. Instead one side of this platform was dominated by an enormous globular tank of some kind - at least three times as tall as he was. An orb of thick glass, encased both at the top and the base in brightly burnished copper, with complicated-looking piping extending from it that hissed and rattled. The orb itself was filled with some opaque, pale-blue liquid - or perhaps gas, it was hard to tell. 

The man was now much more nervous than he had been when he had first awoken, and his curiosity had been diminished by terror. He didn’t belong here, he felt; he didn’t know where here was, he didn’t know who he was, but he wanted to leave. Something, he felt certain, was wrong here, so wrong that dread threatened to smother his thoughts. 

But still, something about the tank called to him. Something moved within its depths, shadows brushing against the glass behind the blue. With some trepidation, he extended a hand and placed a palm against the glass. 

The moment he did so, it was as if an electric shock ran through him. The blue…liquid, or fog, whatever it was, immediately formed into shapes around his outstretched hand, as if drawn to it. Faces, faces in the midst, horrible, warped faces, screaming faces, and they were screaming at him, they were furious, full of rage for him - 

With a gasp, the man tore his hand away, but those faces remained, roiling, blurring into each other, moaning. He backed away, but was unable to tear his eyes from them. 

That is, until he heard the echoing roar of an explosion, and moments later a shockwave hit the platform on which he stood. It trembled, but stood strong. Some of the pipes leading out of the strange tank burst and began hissing a green steam.

Off in the distance, the man could now see red and orange fire blooming in the dark. Something screamed, a long, hoarse, awful screech, and it filled him with the same sense of nausea and terror he had felt when he had seen the machine. Something was out there in the dark - maybe it was the machine? Was the screaming thing what had caused the fires, the explosion?

The man didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He wanted to run, to get away, but where could he run in this place? Everything was unfamiliar to him. Perhaps I really wasn’t cut out to be a man, he thought, as the edges of his form began to waver. Really, things were so much better when I was just a puddle. 

“Hey, there you are,” a woman’s voice shouted to him.

The man whirled to face the voice, though any elation that he might have someone to talk to was drowned out by a rising panic. He saw nothing. “Up here,” called the voice. 

He looked up. 

Descending a long, shining thread through the darkness was - well, it looked almost like a spider. A spider if it were gleaming silver, and instead of a spider’s head, it had what appeared to be the top half of a slim human of indeterminate gender - only also entirely made of smooth, gleaming silver, and with an entirely featureless face - except for one giant, glowing eye embedded in the middle of its forehead. 

“It’s alright, it’s alright!” it cried out, in the deceptive voice of a young woman, as the man backed away from where it was lowering itself to. It reached the platform, unfolded its legs, and flipped expertly from the thread. It was short, coming up no higher than the man’s chest. It - her? Thought the man - spread its arms in a disarming gesture, and its one large eyeball glowed a gentle blue. “Don’t worry,” she went on, her voice quiet and soothing. “I’m here to help. It’s alright.” 

When the man still did not approach her, the silver spider-woman dropped her arms and sighed. Her glowing eye shifted shades to indigo. “You’re going to be the last one,” she murmured sadly. 

Another explosion echoed through the black, closer this time. The shockwave shook the platform hard enough that the spider-woman had to struggle to keep balance. “Come on, we need to get you out of here,” she said, her voice taking on more urgency, as the man looked around to see if the fire was spreading. Another one of those awful screams tore through the dark - it sounded as if dozens, if not hundreds of voices were screaming in unison - and the spider-woman’s one eye shifted from indigo to white. “He got loose. It isn’t safe here.” She held out a hand. “Please, trust me. I want to help you. I’ll take you away from this place.”

The man wasn’t sure if he trusted this strange creature, any more than he was sure he trusted anything in this strange place. She seemed friendly enough, certainly, but what could he possibly know about the innumerable reasons she might have to lie to him? He wished he could say something. Still, it was not as if he had much of a choice. There was something out there, in the dark. He could feel it, now, even when he could not hear it. With his mind, he could feel it, and he did not know whether it was something he was doing or something it was doing to him. But something was out there in the dark that felt vast and hollow. Something that gave the impression of weeping wounds and madness, something that he did not want to let any closer to his mind. 

He took the spider-woman’s hand. His hand, made of light and seemingly insubstantial, now, passed right through hers. As it did, though, it left behind strands, threads of light - of himself? He didn’t know. But the spider-woman grasped these, wound them around her hand, and gave them a gentle tug. The man felt that tug at the core of his being, a bit unpleasantly, and found himself compelled to follow the spider-woman as she quickly walked away, her gleaming legs making a neat tak-tak-tak on the platform. 

She didn’t have far to go. As she approached one of the walkways, she waved a hand, and it bent downwards at a slope with a slight humming sound. She waved her hand at the darkness, and there were more metallic groans, as if this place were rearranging itself at her command, to more quickly bring her where she wanted to be. 

And so in short order the man found himself on another circular platform. This one was smaller than the others he had been on, almost small enough that it felt a bit crowded with both him and the spider-woman on it. In the center of the platform was a glowing ring of white lights, and only a few feet away, a perfectly smooth, reflective silver orb, a little more than the size of his head, floating gently a little bit above the ground. 

The spider-woman led him to stand in the middle of the ring of lights, then stepped back and looked at him. Her eye shifted shade from blue, to pink, to green, and she seemed as if she were about to say something. But then that scream, that ripping, agonizing, agonized scream rang out again, but much closer this time. “I’ve gotta find you a place,” she muttered, and practically dove for the silver orb. 

Immediately, brightly colored symbols - none of which the man could understand - lit up its surface. The spider-woman poked and prodded at these, and some of them whisked away, only to be replaced. Other symbols unfolded, opened up, and became more complex. The man had no idea what was going on. But he held on to the hope he had placed in her. He knew very little, but he did know that he did not want to be caught by the thing in the dark. 

“No, no, no,” the spider-woman muttered in agitation to herself, her eye dimming to an irritated red. “There has to be a better place to set you down - wait, what happened to - Mugo Bon is offline, since when? Fine, fine, where else-” 

Another explosion, and this time, a large hunk of flaming something went screeching overhead, close enough to feel the heat, before plunging down and being swallowed up by the dark. 

“Fine! Here! It will have to be here!” cried the spider-woman, and all of the symbols on the surface of the sphere at once winked and turned green. She extended her hand towards the sphere, but then hesitated. 

The man watched as the spider-woman turned towards him. Her eye was a gentle purple shade now, that dimmed in and out, as if with a heartbeat. “I know you won’t remember this,” she said softly. “And I doubt you’d understand this.” She sounded very tired. “But…you are the last one.” She paused, then turned away from him. “I only ever wanted you to be happy,” she murmured softly. “I loved you.” 

With that, she waved her hand over the surface of the sphere, and a pillar of light erupted around the man. He thought he could hear that awful, unearthly scream once more, and another voice answering it with a scream of its own, full of rage. But then he was being dragged far, far away, at blinding speed, across unimaginable distances, and everything faded away.