Hands grasped at Aleph from all sides and angles, intermittently shoving and pushing him in a specific direction

"Always with the goddamn hands!" He shouted, straining to push them off of him. Individually they were quite weak, but the sheer number of them slowly pushed him along in a particular direction. It was a sea of flesh and bone, but in spite of the number that raked their nails and claws across his bare skin in an attempt to move him, he did not so much as feel pain at their accidental attacks. He was moving quickly through the broiling mass of flesh and keratin when a deep throb ran through his being- emanated through the whole of this realm. The hands suddenly stilled completely, before forming a uniform tunnel and pistoning his body through the gap. As he was shot forward this feeling only grew stronger, until it was so tangible that he could feel it's presence without even having to guess. He could barely see the sky by the time he was flying through the air into a clearing.

Sent feet first, he somehow managed to pull into a near stop and remained rooted in place as he still grinded forward across... normal dirt. Briefly, Aleph genuinely found himself amazed at the entirely-mundane grass beneath his feet, but this was only momentary as another rush of energy swam through his being. The grass reacted as well, rippling across the landscape as though a great wind blew through. And with it came even more plants- curiously, each was one he could label by memory, even the sparse and tiny saplings that began to sprout. Sunflowers, Tulips, Chrysanthemums, Oaks, Redwoods, rich Burgundies- he even recognized a rare type of Cypress that he knew only grew in his hometown of Oregon.

Aleph thought of that place as he walked through the strange conglomeration of gardening knowledge that was this rapidly-growing forest. Getting closer and closer to the source, he walked around a massive Redwood to see something he hadn't seen in close to three years- his family home.

It was in a state of disrepair, patched using concrete of all things in holes in the walls, roofs, and when he peered inside, ceilings and floors as well. It was the sole structure in the clearing, but that too was beginning to change. It was a concrete wall painted in graphene near the bottom, and seeing it's clearly defined construction, a contest from when he was still in college came to mind. He could have recognized the craftmanship anywhere.

It was his.

"So, I finally meet."

A voice he had known by heart for his whole life spoke to him. Spoken from his own mouth, on a face that he saw in the mirror every time he went to wash his hands, in a uniform he wore ever day during his tenure at the United States Department of Energy. Standing in the doorway just beside Aleph was Alec Stein. Himself, somehow.

"Why does your voice have the same weight to it as the orb?" Aleph said, continuing to marvel at what could easily just be a very cleverly built mirror.

"Because it's still.. working its way through my system. Our system, really." He spoke, the thrum growing slower with each moment.

He felt it from below- in his house. "Do you know what's going on? Is this place really my soul?"

Alec put their hand behind their back in what Aleph recognized to be an old tick of his from college when he was feeling nervous, "No to the first question, yes to the last question. And, to be honest, I've just been going by instinct this whole time." He gestured at the wall, "It's a work in progress, all of it. I- what's left of the You of Earth, and what someone attempted to excise, only woke up today. Like you."

"Who would attempt to excise myself from me?"

"Beats us. I'm piecing through your own memories, and our combined knowledge is pretty much the same right now. I'm worried about the drift, but at the same time..." He paused, breaking into a grin. Soon, Aleph felt himself grinning too when he came to the same conclusion Alec did. "Dual minds." Each laughed in the exact same manner, giving eachother the exact same facial expression, "Oh, god, this is so fucking weird. What have you been up to in the intervening time, me?"

"Well, unfortunately, not much. All of this? I only could dream of before you brought in that Orb of yours. No idea where you got it- oh, no, there it is. You just grabbed it from some weird succubus? Are you mad? Well, at least I can't argue with results."

"And neither can I. But what's the purpose of the forest? I can understand the wall, and the house- some kind of metaphysical protection. But why make some forest formed of random memories of..." He paused, squinting slightly at his doppelganger, "Oh. Oooohhh I get it, that's clever." Alec soaked in the praise, "But, none of these plants are from this planet, won't somebody find it suspicious?" Alec slightly wilted at that. "Yes, this is unfortunately true. The obfuscating effect the forest will have might become a little muted to someone who doesn't understand the extraneous information- that's the reason behind the wall. It has the same effect, but less subtle. More towards... direct protection, but those kinds of concepts fall short in a place like this."

"A place of the mind," Aleph sagely nodded, before having another thought, "Hmm, does this place have a physical location? Or is it really all in the mind?"

Alec shrugged, "I tried sending out a drone through the sea of hands, and the thing lasted maybe a minute in this empty void beyond it before being depleted of battery. I never got the energy back, unlike any of the other constructs I build... I was almost thrown into it, you know. Something dragged me in there, away from me, but it stopped for some reason, and then... and then the hands appeared, and pulled me back in. That was my first memories of existence."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"This probably happened at the same time as I woke up in that nuclear wasteland, naked. Say... when do you remember it stopping? How many minutes? Seconds?

The clone went silent for a moment, pondering, "Roughly 20 seconds." His eyes widened, "When you saw the first laser appear! We were directly below that thing, this can't be a-"

The engine thrummed once more, powerfully, cutting off his sentence. Aleph quirked an eyebrow, "Mind telling me what that is down there?"

Alec similarly raised his, "You don't know? You built it, you know. We did. It was- it was what started all of this madness. We thought it to have been our magnum opus until it KILLED ME AND I DIED. How the bloody hell could you have forgotten?"

Aleph grew more and more worried as they spoke, but remained confused. "I'm sorry, but I don't recall... anything, beyond..." He pondered, before shaking his head, "What, just before I went to work that day? And... wait, I still am thinking of myself as Alec in those memories. Why can't I help but think of myself as Aleph? Gods, this is so confusing..."

He felt a hand on his shoulder, "You're not alone." Alec reminded him. "I'm also really, really, REALLY fucking confused." Both of their collective mirth faded into laughter after that, but came back to that topic immediately. "I don't think we were intentional. That much is certain- that thing, it didn't just stop. It died right before me. That mist it turned into became the wall of hands. The same hands that pulled me back in. Definitely unintentional." Alec stroked the stubble on his beard, "I need to show you the Engine. Perhaps, you just might glean something from it. Come." Alec stepped into the house, and he obliged.

Inside, it was pretty much exactly as he remembered it. Some creative liberties were taken in spots, though- namely, places he couldn't fully recall were stretched and warped, and places he had forgotten entirely were filled in with concrete. In places where his memories had been entirely removed, it looked almost like the building had been patched up with concrete. Aleph stepped down the stairs of a basement that didn't exist in his home yet he remembered clearly all the same, somehow, and the feeling of that thing- the engine- it became louder and louder where previously he heard nothing. The stairs took a long time to descend into, but he eventually reached the basement. A concrete cube encased a graphene box- the strongest material known to man. With a wave of Alec's hand, the box unfolded, and the two doppelgangers were showered in a pale blue light.

"This," Alec said, "Is the Eternity Engine. And it is based off of our working theory of Eternity Itself." He grimaced, "Information that somebody or something tried to steal, and was stopped from doing so. We are missing a few details as to who." He walked closer to the Engine- it was still blindingly bright, but he could make out it's sillhouette, "But it is also how we can grow stronger really fast. Wanna know how we fuel it?" Alec finished, grinning again as they prepared what Aleph immediately recognized as a cheesy reference.

"How do we fuel it, me-but-one-hour-older?" Aleph dared.

"FETCH ME THEIR SOULS!" He bellowed, putting more weight into it to replicate that Pirates of the Caribbean vibe. "Its powered by this salient thing I'll just call Creation Energy for now. Like all engines, it doesn't just need gas- it needs oxygen and heat. A little was left over from the Hands debacle, and somehow, Soul Catalysts also have this energy. As for the heat equivalent, it is just produced by lots of effort in that regard. Yeah, lots of mental effort is needed for it. That's why you immediately felt your sense fail you a little there. Thankfully, there's two of us to shore up the effort." Once again, Alec furrowed his brow, "I guess if they copied me rather than simply deleting me and moving on with their life, they tried to take me in order to steal memories. A worrying prospect."

Aleph was feeling over the Eternity Engine in it's entirety when it stopped working, and with it, so did the weight in Alec's voice.

"Well, there goes the easy way of telling the difference between us." Alec harrumphed.

"Wait a second, how does the eternity engine make us stronger?" Aleph asked, curious. "Ravanaugh said that soul catalysts strengthen you based off of your concept of who you are- how does this engine do that? Does it strengthen us based off our understanding of... Eternity?" He felt close to the answer.

"Well, have you noticed something odd yet?" Alec questioned. Aleph shook his head. "We're indestructible, here. Eternity is, again, stranger than just meaning we're harder to hurt. We're... more permanent, I suppose. It's hard to explain metaphoricals, just absorb my memories. You can do that by concentrating on me."

Aleph did just that, and he also understood the confusion. "How on earth did we make anything out of this? Some random thesis and half-baked inspiration made something we are literally calling the Eternity Engine? Holy hell."

They shrugged in response, "It wasn't just some inspiration- we arrived at the exact answer we needed to in order to finish it in the shortest time possible. That is something... both amazing and terrifying, given the implications. I'd guess the gods know more about this than we do- the ones Rav mentioned." Alec then held his nose before dragging it down across his chin, "Oh, hell. We're going to- well, you know. It's been a long time since we relied on our old pal. From what I can tell, you'll need all the luck we can get."

Aleph grimaced a little, but nodded. "Yeah, but it really is lucky that we ran across them- it begs the question, though. How do I get out of here?" He asked Alec.

They looked at the slowly dimming eternity engine behind them, and broke out into another grin, "I thought you'd never ask. According to every bit of information I've absorbed so far, this is the most effective way to break out of this trance. Now, hold still."

Aleph did, and a moment later, felt the punch connect with his cheek and reality fragment apart at the seams once more.