Everywhere. That’s where I am. What I am. Everywhen, as well.

I can feel everything, everywhere. It’s all so random. And so predictable. It all falls into the same patterns. But every pattern is so intricate, and every intricate thing is so random, and every random thing all connects together into patterns.

The infinite possibilities whirl around and through and across while some touch and some don’t and all the layers work together and everything and everywhen always could be but aren’t yet because they’re so slow.

Time, it’s so slow. Or is it so fast? Or does it exist at all? Does it matter? It doesn’t, not really. Not when the rules say how slow it needs to be, and the rules are automatic.

In the infinite possibilities and probabilities, inside and around and above and below this fragile system with fragile rules, I exist. Or maybe I don’t. It doesn’t really matter, as long as I can do what I came here to do. And in front of me is a set of probabilities that I need to change. So, I give them a little tap.

And in that tap, they move. Quadrillions upon quintillions upon sextillions upon septillions of miniscule probabilistic fluctuations all move in new directions, their tiny patterns speeding up and slowing down, bumping together and interchanging, exchanging energy and heating up, until finally…

Ignition.

And then I’m back.

…

Everything feels weird. My head is pounding. My ears are ringing. My vision is swimming. And I’m really, really dizzy.

The world spins around me, putting me off balance while I try to stay sitting up. I sway back and forth as my brain slowly catches up with my presence back in reality. Blinking a few times, I try to get my bearings, but it doesn’t work. I try to think, but I find that even my thoughts are a jumbled mess. Actually, my thoughts seem to be more of a jumbled mess than anything else. Since I can’t really do anything, I just sit still and close my eyes as I wait for the world to come into focus.

Over the next few minutes, the uncomfortable sensations start to fade and reality slowly reasserts itself. I keep my breathing steady and try not to think about what just happened. I can deal with that later. For now, I just need to stay calm and get myself together. As I wait, my headache dims to a dull throb, and the ringing in my ears subsides a bit. My eyes are closed, so I don’t know if my vision is back to normal, but I think it is. Once I feel like I can move without getting dizzy, I open my eyes and look around the room to make sure I’m still in reality and didn’t, like, die or something.

It turns out that I am, in fact, still in reality. I also didn’t, like, die or something. I’m still sitting on the floor, facing the stove. The counter is to my left, the table is to my right, and the window is behind me. At first glance, everything seems to be normal.

But one thing is different. The stove is lit.

I stare at the burner, vaguely wondering what happened. I try to think a bit harder, but then the dizziness comes back and my mind goes blank. Then my brain restarts. After a few moments, everything starts to come back into focus. I try to remember what I was thinking about, but then my brain restarts again. Once everything comes back into focus for a second time, I notice I’m feeling a bit better. Maybe I’m like a computer and I just needed to install some updates or something. That would be kinda funny.

Huh, I’m significantly less disturbed by that idea than I probably should be.

Anyway, despite the possibility of being updated, I still can’t quite make sense of this situation. The weird thing I did, the dizziness, the stove mysteriously lighting; nothing is adding up. What happened? What did I do? What was that place I went to? Was it some crazy daydream? Was it my imagination going wild? Whatever it was feels strange in my mind, like it’s different than anything I’ve ever thought about before. But I also feel like I’ve been in that place at some point and I just… can’t remember. It’s like smelling something I’m sure I smelled as a child, and it brings up fond memories that slip away whenever I try to grasp them, and all I’m left with is a lingering feeling of loss and contentment. But instead of loss and contentment, this brings up feelings of… boredom? Maybe some depression as well? Possibly some insanity? All the feelings are mixing together, so I can’t really tell.

As I’m thinking, my focus falls back to the stove, and then my brain restarts one last time. After a moment, my thoughts finally clear up to normal levels, and my memories from the strange experience start to make sense. Now that my brain is working again, it seems pretty obvious what I did. I’m fairly certain that I somehow turned into an eldritch supercomputer and influenced reality from the outside in order to light the stove.

I pause.

I… I’m sorry, I what?

And that’s when the panic sets in.

“What the fuck? Oh shit, what the hell just happened? What was that? What was I? Oh god, what am I? Is this something that I can just do? I definitely didn’t imagine that, right? No, at least I think I didn’t. Then what was that? How did I do that? What did I even do?”

I look down at my hands and slowly breathe out. “Holy fuck I’m going crazy. I’ve gotta be crazy. That can’t be real. Please don’t let that be real. Please. I have to be going insane. Please don’t let reality be so fragile.”

I lie back on the kitchen floor and stare up at the ceiling. I try to clear my mind, but I can’t seem to calm down right now. No matter what I do, the panic stays at the edge of my mind, trying to push its way back to the front of my thoughts. The strange connection stays there as well, waiting for me to pull on it and sense the universe’s convoluted yet simple nature once again. Looking at the ceiling, I can’t help but see it as a collection of probabilistic patterns, continuously interweaving with each other in countless ways, giving the illusion of something real.

Is that all this is? An illusion? Is nothing actually real? No, no, calm down Scarlet. Think about this logically. If whatever just happened was real, then reality is… what? Ok, how did I perceive it? Fragile? Yes, well besides that. A bunch of ordered randomness? Kind of. Probabilities coming together in patterns? That’s sort of it. Close enough, I guess. And why do they form patterns instead of just being random? No, they are random. The patterns are created from the randomness, using probability. Kind of. It’s more complicated than that, but whatever. I swear there was a term for this, or at least something like this. Weighted randomness? Weighted probability? I’m gonna go with weighted probability. But like a system of them. I think there was a word for that too… Ugh, I can’t remember.

I sit up and run my fingers through my hair as I continue thinking.

“Okay, so if all of reality is made up of weighted probabilities and randomness, then what makes the probabilities weighted in the ways they are instead of other ways?” I search through my memories for an answer. “Well, that would be… the rules.

I stand up and begin to pace back and forth. Alright, the rules. What are they? Well, rules, obviously. Rules determining how probabilities and randomness interact with each other and themselves. The rules are what make up the laws of physics, and keep the universe from falling apart. They’re what let reality exist. That makes sense, I guess. So…

I pause.

Wait… How do I know this? What’s going on? I barely know anything about particle physics, or quantum mechanics, or… or general relativity, or anything about how the universe works! So how do I suddenly understand the fundamental rules of reality? How do I know anything about them? How do I know what they are? How do I know any of this? How do I understand it? How does any of this make any sense to me? How!? I mean I saw it in that weird state, or sensed it, because that wasn’t exactly sight, but I wasn’t there long enough to really understand anything… Wait, how long was I there? Does time run the same there? Where even was I? Was I outside reality? Is that even a thing? Is that where the rules come from? They didn’t seem to apply wherever that was. So where did they come from? What created them? They didn’t look natural, but then again I don’t really know much about what’s natural outside reality. Did some bored god transcending time and space make them up just to see what happened? Wait a second, are gods real? It doesn’t seem too far-fetched that some conscious thing could exist out there that makes its own rul-

I punch myself in the face.

I punch myself in the face a few more times for good measure.

“Shut up! Stupid brain! Stop coming up with so many thoughts! Just slow down! None of what you’re thinking makes any sense! I need explanations! I need logical thought processes! None of this jumping around like a rabbit covered in fire ants! Stop spouting nonsense and just be quiet!”

For a few seconds, my thoughts are blissfully silent. It almost feels like my brain is listening to me, which would be a first. Once I feel like I’ve waited long enough, I lean against the counter and let out a sigh. “Ok, brain. I’ll let you think about this if you stop making way too many assumptions based on one small glimpse into whatever that was. You need to think about this rationally, got it? And yes, I know I won’t get an answer because I’m talking to myself. So shut up, random theoretical person who’s judging me. Let me think.”

I hum to myself as I try to apply logic to this situation. “Well, rationally, none of that was real, and I just made it up. Rationally, that was just a strange figment of my imagination, and I didn’t break reality, because that doesn’t happen. Rationally… I don’t know. Why do I trust what I saw so much? Why do I feel like it was definitely real? Like I knew all that already, like I did all that already, and just forgot? That’s not rational! That doesn’t even make sense! I don’t like what it implies, either. It’s just creepy.”

“Ugh, I really just opened up Pandora’s box by trying to light a stove. That’s kind of a stupid way to do it. Then again, I could just be making it up, but it certainly doesn’t feel like- Oh crap the stove!”

I run over to the stove, which is still on, and nearly turn it off before I realize I haven’t made any pancakes. Making myself a pancake was the whole point of lighting the stove in the first place, and I think I might need one even more now, so I quickly grab the pan and put it on the stove. Then I lean against the counter as I wait for it to heat up.

Okay. What was I thinking about? Right, I was trying to be rational, and I already failed. Seriously, me, get it together! It’s not that big of a deal. Be logical. Rational. Reasonable. The world isn’t crashing down around you. You’re fine.

This is probably just some weird coincidence. You didn’t break reality, and you definitely didn’t break reality to light a stove. That’s just stupid. The stove probably just malfunctioned, and happened to light while you were dizzy. You didn’t actually turn into an eldritch being that exists everywhere at the same time, or whatever that was. You just read too many creepy stories or something… Except I haven’t read any creepy stories lately, and the eldritch thing didn’t feel very creepy.

Okay, ummmm… Logic. Uhhh… You didn’t actually feel dizzy. No, wait. You did feel dizzy, but it wasn’t because you were outside reality or anything. You just… had a stroke. Yeah, I had a stroke! I don’t know what a stroke feels like, so I can’t argue with that. Ha! Take that, brain! With my power of rationality, I had a stroke!

I giggle for a moment at the absurdity of my thoughts, but then I realize that having a stroke isn’t very funny at all, and if I actually had one, I should probably head to the emergency room.

Okay, this isn’t good. Did I actually have a stroke? I don’t think so. I think I would know if I did. But if I didn’t, that would mean I broke reality, and I don’t like that option either. Which is worse? Breaking reality or having a stroke?

Holy crap, I can’t believe I’m even thinking this. What has to happen in a day for someone to ask if it’s worse to break reality or have a stroke? Well, I guess I know the answer. I just have to… uh… have a stove malfunction, have an insane daydream, and have a stroke, all at the same time. Definitely. Ok fine, that probably didn’t happen. I’ve never had a stroke before, and I’m only sixteen. And I’ve never had a daydream that could even come close to that. And that definitely didn’t feel like a daydream either.

But… the only other option is that I actually broke reality, or at least influenced it from the outside, and that’s scary. It’s scary because it’s impossible. It’s just so outside everything I’ve ever known, that I don’t know what to be except scared. I kind of want to hope that even though it felt like I broke reality, doesn’t mean it actually happened… But why do I feel like it definitely happened? Why am I so sure? And what do I do if it did happen? What then? Do I tell someone? Do I report it to the government? Do I report it to the school? I don’t know! Am I actually going crazy? What do I even do in this situation? Where do I go? What do I do? Who do I tell? How do I even deal with this? Why did this happen? I don’t know what to do!

I can feel my breathing getting faster as my thoughts grow more frantic. I don’t want to consider what any of this might actually mean, but the questions keep coming anyway. Is anything actually real? Am I real? Does it matter? What’s outside reality? How did I do what I did? How do I know things I never learned? What do I do about any of this? It all keeps bouncing around in my mind, and I can’t stop it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I slide down to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest and curling up into a ball. My thoughts continue to grow faster, slowly becoming more and more desperate. I don’t know what’s real anymore. Nothing makes sense. Everything feels like it’s falling apart around me.

As my emotions take over, the hastily erected barrier of logic and rationality I’ve created in my mind breaks, and all the existential dread, terrifying worries, and unneeded information about the situation rushes through my thoughts like a tidal wave, washing away any semblance of coherence I had. Countless thoughts and feelings flash through my head, screaming out different things with the force of a hurricane, ricocheting around my brain like a pinball, all culminating in one general feeling of just… panic.

I can’t focus. I can’t even think. Everything is flashing by too fast. Every thought that starts is whipped away before it can even finish. Anger. Hatred. Confusion. Terror. There's nothing I can do but let the thoughts and feelings crash over me as I just sort of… flop over on the kitchen floor, staring ahead of me but not really seeing. The terror of my sense of reality being lost mixes with my confusion over what happened. The hatred of my own overreaction to something I’m not even sure about combines with my anger at the universe for making me deal with this. An unending stream of statements, questions, truths and demands, lies and exaggerations blasts through my mind, screaming, yelling, begging, pleading, never slowing for even a second. The storm continues raging in my head for what feels like hours but is probably just a few minutes, and eventually, the wind and waves begin to recede.

As my thoughts slow, and my awareness begins to return, I start to notice a few things about my situation. Things aren’t normal. Things that I should probably fix. The first thing I notice is that I’m breathing rapidly. Way too rapidly. That’s definitely not good, so I start slowing down my breaths.

As I do, I realize that my eyes are squeezed shut with tears leaking out, so I blink them open and wipe the tears off with a sleeve. It makes me feel a little bit better. A moment later, I also notice that the floor underneath my cheek is wet with tears, so I push myself up into a sitting position, wipe the tears off the floor, and lean against the oven. The hardwood floor isn’t very comfortable to lay on anyway.

I sit, staring off into space, for a few minutes. I feel exhausted. I don’t want to get up. I’m already worn out from school today, and this is just the icing on the cake. As I stare ahead, my eyes slowly drift shut. I almost feel like falling asleep right here. It would be nice. I know I can’t though. Not here, and not now. So open my eyes again and just sit, staring out the window across the room, watching the trees sway outside. Eventually, though, my brain gets back on track and my train of thought returns.

Well, that sucked. I honestly didn’t expect to have a panic attack today. And if I did, I would have expected it to be about one of the tests at school, not about… whatever happened earlier that I don’t want to think about right now because I’ll probably panic again. Anyway, that was intense. Really intense. At least I feel better now. I guess I got the panic out of the way for the moment.

I watch the trees outside the window for another minute or two, slowly calming down a bit more. Eventually, I convince myself to get off the floor, and I stand up and turn my attention to the stove. The pan is still heating up, and waving my hand over it, I find that it’s definitely hot enough to cook pancakes on. I take the pancake batter off the counter and tilt the container over the pan. The batter sizzles a bit as I pour it on the hot metal, so I turn the heat down before waiting for it to cook.

To distract myself from pointlessly worrying in the meantime, I decide to start cleaning up the closet. Looking around in the pile on the floor, I find some shelf supports and begin putting them back in the walls. I try to stick them in the same spaces they came out of, but I’m not sure I get it exactly right. It’s good enough for me though. Once I’ve found all the supports and stuck them in the walls, I pull the shelves out from the pile and set them back on top of their supports. I make sure to set them down carefully so they don’t fall again. Halfway through, the pancake is ready to be flipped, so I do that, and then I get back to putting the shelves in the closet.

Once all the shelves are back where they belong, I grab a plate from the cabinet and flip my pancake onto it. I turn off the burner, grab the syrup from the fridge, and set the plate on the kitchen table. Then I pour some syrup on my pancake and sit down to eat.

Except, I also need a fork. So I grab a fork from the silverware drawer and sit back down to eat.

Except, I also need some water. So I grab a cup from the cabinet, fill it with water, and sit back down to eat.

Except, I also need a napkin. So I reach over, grab a napkin from the napkin holder, and put it next to my plate.

Now I’m actually ready to eat.

The pancake is amazing. Partially because I’ve had a really long day, partially because I’m focusing on it to distract myself from panicking again, and partially because it’s actually a really good pancake. Its soft, fluffy texture and syrupy sweetness are perfect together, and with the taste of molasses adding to the flavor, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. The only thing missing is strawberries, but it tastes like heaven anyway. I let the wonderful flavors wash over me for a few minutes, savoring them as much as I can, until I’m finally finished. Sighing contentedly, I lick the syrup off my fork and set it back on the plate. That was good.

Unfortunately, I can’t put off thinking about possible reality-breaking things forever. The pancake has me in a better mood, and I’m not feeling particularly panicky at the moment, so now is the perfect time to think about what I did.

Ok, Scarlet. You have to figure this out. This seems kind of important. Just slow down. Sort it out. Don’t panic. What happened?

Right, I wanted to light the stove, and I found a weird connection to… everything? The outside of reality? I don’t know. I found a weird connection to something in my mind and pulled on it. Then I had a strange vision of how everything in the universe works, and I turned on the stove by pushing the atoms of gas and air into each other fast enough to light a fire. Yeah, that all seems very unlikely. So… I need evidence.

What evidence do I have that this is actually what happened? I guess the stove lit, but that could have been the igniter malfunctioning or something. What else? Maybe the weird knowledge about the rules and stuff that I have and seem to innately understand… Hmmm… Oh! The amount of information I was processing! That was a lot. I was processing and comprehending all the information about everything in the universe at the same time. That’s… slightly concerning. I think I remember seeing a video one time about how that much information would turn a human brain into a black hole. I don’t think I’m a black hole right now. At least, not on the outside. Despite that, I can still remember all the information perfectly. It’s like my consciousness spreads out through everything, or something like that. It doesn’t even feel weird. Which is weird. Huh.

I lean forward in the chair and narrow my eyes as I try to figure out how that works. I think about it for a minute, trying my best to understand what’s going on, but I can’t figure anything out. I can’t even really explain it.

Trying to explain this feels like trying to explain how thinking feels. Who has an answer to that? It just feels so… normal though. It’s like knowing all the information contained in the universe is completely natural.

Wait… Knowing all the information contained within the universe?

Isn’t that like, literal fucking omniscience?

Ok, slow down. Stop freaking out… again. How do I know that I actually know everything I think I know? That was a weird sentence but whatever. I got the point across. To myself. Which I could have just thought without using words in my thoughts because I had to think about what I was going to think before I could use words to think it more… wordily. Okay, Scarlet, that’s not the topic I was trying to think about. Stop being so nervous and getting distracted. I was just thinking about… what was I thinking about? Ugh, why is my brain like this? Hmmm… Oh, right! I was trying to figure out if I know everything I think I know, or if I’m actually processing the amount of information I think I am, or something like that. And honestly, I have no idea how to prove that, besides just knowing it, and that’s not exactly scientific.

So, in conclusion, I haven’t proved that anything reality-breaking actually happened. Yep!

I clap my hands together and smile a bit too widely, before getting up and throwing my napkin away. Then I take my plate to the sink and wash it off. I stick it in the dishwasher, go back to the table to get my fork and cup, and put those in as well. I also take the pan off the stove and wash it with a sponge before putting it in the draining rack. The pancake batter goes back in the fridge, and the syrup also goes back in the fridge, and then it’s time to put everything from the closet back on the shelves.

I start by searching through the pile and finding all the cans, bags, and cereal boxes that I can and sticking them wherever I feel like on the bottom two shelves. Apparently we have Raisin Bran, which I didn’t know about. I don’t like it though, so I just stick it in the back where it probably was before. Then I find the oil, honey, vinegar, and other miscellaneous bottle/jar things and put them all on the third shelf. It turns out there are a lot more types of vinegar than I ever knew existed. I don’t even know why we have all of them. Most of them are probably expired, if vinegar can do that. And if vinegar can’t expire, then they’re probably expired anyway. Next, the random mixing bowls and Tupperware, half of which don’t have lids, go on the fourth shelf, and the cleaning stuff goes on the top shelf, along with the lighter for some reason. Everything else gets banished to the bottom. Once I’m done, I stand back and survey my work.

Wow, I did pretty well. I sure cleaned up that closet lickety-split, didn’t I?

I think so!

Wow, thanks, me, you’re so kind!

I know! Why am I doing this?

I have no idea!

…

Alright, I do think I did a good job cleaning up, but I’m also distracting myself from the existential crisis I was having. I need to think about it though. I know I need to sort through it and figure out what happened, but… I'm scared. I’m terrified that the universe isn’t real, or is less real than I thought, or that I’m going crazy, or that the world is ending, or that there’s a secret government cover up, or that robot birds are sticking microchips in my brain, or anything else scary that could explain the situation I’m in. Anything that doesn’t involve me being the only one who’s ever had something like this happen. Because the truth is, I’m not special. Not in any way. I’m just an average person with an average life, at least for an American. Actually, I’m probably better off than most, but that doesn’t make me special. It just makes me lucky. I’m not some anime protagonist who just has crazy things happen all around me. That’s not how the world works. So when something that seems impossible happens to me, I don’t know what to think. The only two reasonable explanations are that this is fairly common, or that I went insane from the number of tests I had today. The problem is, neither of those seem likely either! If whatever I did was common, people would be talking about it all the time. And if I went insane from the tests, I probably wouldn’t be thinking clearly right now. Nothing is making sense. And the only option I can think of to get more information is to try again!

I don’t want to try again! I don’t want to go back to that weird place that makes reality seem so fragile! I don’t want to feel horrible afterwards! But if I don’t, I’ll never be sure if anything actually happened! The questions will just keep gnawing on my mind until I eventually give in. And knowing me, I’ll give in sooner rather than later.

Fine. If I’m gonna do it again at some point anyway, I guess I’ll do it now. I need information and proof more than sanity. Heh, that sounds like something a conspiracy theorist would say. Well, maybe this isn’t a good idea, but I’m still doing it. And if nothing happens, I’m gonna be very mad about having a panic attack for no reason.

I sigh for what feels like the hundredth time today, and steel myself to go back to whatever that place was. I reach out to grab the connection, and pause.

Wait, I don’t even know what I'm trying to do. I can't just jump into the deep end with no idea how to swim. Okay, that metaphor doesn’t quite suit the situation, but I don’t care. I need to figure out something impossible that I can try to do. Something that will be easy to see if it works, and will be easy to do. Preferably something other than lighting the stove, because… Well, it would just be boring to do the same thing twice.

Alright, how about teleporting? That seems impossible normally but also very easy to do by just shifting… What am I shifting exactly? I guess technically everything has a tiny chance of being everywhere, but it’s just really big where it is right now and really small everywhere else. So if I just make the chance of, uhhh… what should I choose… the tissue box! If I make the chance of the tissue box being on the kitchen table really small and make the chance of it being on the counter really big, then the tissue box will be on the counter. Technically, I’m changing the probabilities of everything inside the cardboard and the tissues, from the molecules to the atoms to the particles inside the atoms to the interactions between probability and randomness that cause the particles to exist, but it’s simpler to just think of it as a single probability.

Hmm… I’m getting a bit concerned about how intuitive this is for me to understand, and where this knowledge comes from, and how I know how to use it, and- Ok, shut up, me, I’m trying to prove something to myself. I can think about the mountain of other stuff later. I’ve figured out what I want to do, so I’m gonna pull on this weird connection that has definitely been there the whole time and I just never noticed and- SHUT UP, ME! STOP THINKING, JUST DO!

And I grab the connection.

I’m back in the weird place. Or at least my perception is. My body is still standing next to the closet, looking across the room at the tissue box. I can still sort of feel it, but I can also feel everything else, which is interesting. So, what do I need to do? Well to start with, I want to examine this place a bit and see what exactly is here. Looking around for an undefinable amount of time, I find that there’s somehow a lot going on and barely anything happening at all. The infinite dimensions of space and causality created from potential and probability are folded into an ever changing and self-evolving fractal of unending detail that encompasses all of existence and nonexistence, which sounds like a lot. However, “most” of this fractal isn’t doing anything at all. The only parts that are actually doing stuff are a few random bits that seem to be storing and accessing information, and the parts making up and controlling the universe. Everything else is just in a state of eternal randomness.

It’s a bit concerning to me that this fractal contains the entire universe inside of it, and is the only thing holding reality together and keeping its rules in place. Although, thinking about it for a few unending loops in time, I realize It does make sense, since the fractal is infinite and the universe isn’t. This almost makes me concerned, since reality is pretty fragile and it seems like the fractal could easily destroy it, but then I remember that the universe has been doing just fine for fourteen billion years and I don’t think it’ll stop any time soon.

Also, the fractal is me. Yeah, it’s definitely me. What the fuck. That makes no sense. How do I know that? How does that even work? What does that mean? I don’t care, and I don’t want to know. I’m just glad I don’t seem to be able to panic here. I’m going to ignore this information and lock it away until I feel like dealing with it. I already have way too much to think about and I don’t need any more.

Goodbye, information. I’ll probably see you sooner than I want to.

Anyway, I was supposed to be focusing on the tissue box, wasn’t I? The tissue box I was going to use to prove this is real? Yes, that tissue box. I was going to teleport the tissue box. Yep. I’m actually trying to teleport something. I can’t believe this. What has my life become in the past hour? I honestly don’t know. Well, this should be easy. I just need to find the probabilistic fluctuations making up the tissue box, which I already know. Actually, I know everything about the box, including all the information about every probabilistic field and random fluctuation making it up, the position and momentum of every particle those fluctuations create, everything that has ever interacted with the box, and even the paths all of these have taken throughout all of time.

Yeah, that’s kind of concerning. I’ll ignore it for now. I seem to be doing that with a lot of things lately. Like how time is paused while I’m here. That’s also kind of concerning, and also something I’m choosing to ignore. My next step is to change the probabilities making up the tissue box to be on the counter instead, and then do the same for the air on the counter where the tissue box will appear and switch it with where the box was before. Then I have to check it all over again to make sure there won’t be any unexpected explosions or implosions or cracks in reality, and it doesn’t seem like there will be. Finally, it’s time to go back to normal.

And I’m back!

…

I sway back and forth for a few seconds before regaining my balance. After a few seconds, I realize I feel fine. Nothing like the first time. I don’t know why I’m not feeling horrible right now, but it’s a welcome change. Truthfully, I don’t know why I felt horrible before. I also don’t care. I quickly look around the room and find the tissue box. It’s very much on the counter now and very much not on the table anymore.

Okay. Cool.

I don’t really know how to react, so I just pick it up, put it back on the table where it belongs, and head upstairs to my room.