Yo, it’s your boy Jilbert here, like and sub-...Wait, was I doing? Sorry, I’m still half asleep, the inside of my head feels like the left-lobe of my brain was filled with cotton candy, and the right lobe was filled with steel wool and glass. I think I had my own little semi-traumatic breakthrough, just like the missus.

There’s more of me. I keep it mostly compact and folded into the rest of my body, but I think I’ve grown to at least three times my former-size, which is a fairly big deal because I was a transcendental entity of pure data, energy, and logic now...So swelling to three times my size was A) much harder than you’d think, and B)not just me becoming fat. My true-body gaining three times its former “mass” equated to me becoming roughly 27 times as strong as I used to be.

I was a bit disoriented when I first woke up but Jack was just getting back into bed…I’ve no clue what she was doing prior to that, knowing her it was either hard work, training, family planning, or mischief. Or possibly all four at the same time.

The point is, when I woke up Jack was in bed with me, which went a long way to keeping me from freaking out as a whole bunch of my senses suddenly slammed the dial past eleven...again... and a whole bunch of new senses woke up as well. I'd spent the first couple of nights feeling so out of sorts that I couldn’t really do much. Now I was still out of sorts, but I had pulled myself together enough that I could at least log into the Empty Dream to make some necessary updates, upgrades, and bug fixes.

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Nowadays, logging into the Empty Dream was even easier and more convenient than it had been before. So long as you were already connected to the Empty-Network you just needed to think about the Empty Dream application and you’d feel your point of view violently lurch upwards and to the left. That probably doesn’t sound very comfortable, but there was a reason for that. It was the same reason that I also included a permanent extra element of sensory-interference into the experience. It was because my Empty-Dream operated with such high-fidelity that we’d decided that we need cues for users to separate the dream from reality.

However, lately, as the Empty-Dream developed I was starting to wonder if that was even necessary, or if I should just embrace the fact that I’d created a gamified reality that people could visit at will so long as they were logged into my network. The reason being that as the Empty-Dream advanced, its internal laws and logic had reached a point where I was starting to run out of reasons for not simply allowing users to live in the Empty-Dream full time, if they so wished.

Tests had shown that there were no real adverse effects for the body, mind, or spirit to prolonged use of the Empty-Dream. The stasis-shields that protected users while their astral-projections explored the dream had reached a level of comfort, integrity, and healthfulness that almost made it feel negligent to not promote full-time living within the Empty-Dream. As such, it now sort of felt like I was just being stubborn for no reason.

I made the updates and upgrades I’d meant to make. I could do so without interrupting the playtime of those who were already plugged into the dream because all the servers worked off a complex of parallel hubs that interacted with each other, but didn’t necessarily have to interfere with one another, and the number of servers supporting the dream’s operation greatly exceeded what the dream actually needed by several trillions of times. Meaning it wasn’t a problem to just push everyone to one part of the system while I worked in other parts, and then “gently” recombine the whole dream afterward. Any hiccups in the code would be handled by the constructs and AIs that I’d set up to watch over the dream while Jack and I were busy with other things.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Just as I finished working on the updates, I got a notification. I’d just been messaged by one of our friends from back home. I opened the message and saw a picture of a baby. An admittedly adorable baby with big hazel eyes, light caramel skin, and dark hair done up in a cuter little ponytail. The baby was well...a baby. She had a big head. She had a small body. She was dressed in a tiny infant-sized cultivator robe. I’d had no clue that the Forest of Life and Death made uniforms that size but suddenly I kind of wanted one...For later down the line. Her chubby fists held a plush sword that she was drooling on.

The picture was followed by a text message.

[Trefor-Before-And-After: Yo, look at my son, son! Isn’t that little motherfucker adorable!]

My brow furrowed as I looked at the picture again.

[Admin Chill-Jill: Wait, that’s your kid! Hold up, that’s a boy?]

[Trefor-Before-And-After: What?! What part of that little cutie looks like a gross boy! *Angry Emoji*]

[Admin Chill-Jill: ???! ...But you just said…]

[Trefor-Before-And-After: I know what I said...The pun-time is over, let’s move on shall we?]

[Admin Chill-Jill: *Teddy-Bear Losing Its Temper Emoji* Tch...Whatever. So who's the mom?]

[Trefor-Before-And-After: Kek, kek, kek...Three guesses…*Shitting Eating Goat.GIF*]

I took a second to think, and after a millisecond of thinking, a single thought came to mind.

[Admin Chill-Jill: Wow...You two finally got together?]

[Trefor-Before-And-After: *Salary Man Sheepishly Rubbing the Back of His Head.GIF* Well, what can I say, man? My charm is irresistible]

[Miya-Mia-Mine: More like we both wore each other down after a bit of will they, won’t they, back and forth...So, Jill, where’ve you been for the last three centuries or so?]

I blinked.

“I haven’t logged in for a full 300 years?” I muttered. Double-checking my history in the Empty Dream to confirm that her words were true.

[Admin Chill-Jill: *Spit-take.GIF* It’s been more than 350 years already?! Damn, my bad...Didn’t we have a chess game that we were playing?] I messaged. Deciding to play it off like it was no big deal, instead of revealing how disturbed I was to have lost more than a third of a millennia to that madness with the Shatter-World’s immortals.

[Miya-Mia-Mine:...Well, I still have the save from that particular chess game, but I imagine neither of us will have remembered where we were headed with that particular game, so well...So we’d probably be better off starting afresh…]

[Admin Chill-Jill: Fair enough…]

[Trefor-Before-And-After: Seriously, dude...Have you guys been okay? We were getting a little worried.]

I sighed. Feeling touched.

[Admin Chill-Jill:....]

[Admin Chill-Jill: We’re fine...Sorry for worrying you. Seriously...We just ran into a little trouble from the Shattered World’s Heavenly Realm...On that note...If you guys are getting close to ascending, I highly suggest you check out the new areas I’ve added. Hopefully, it’ll be of help.]

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I was feeling much calmer after chatting with my friends for a bit and doing a little routine data-alteration on the Empty-Dream. Jack came in and we had a little alone time. We didn’t do anything sexual, it was just nice to be in each other’s company without the world going crazy around us, or one of us being critically injured.

Later Jack told me about her discussions with Empress Kian and asked about what I thought of us aligning with the Dragons, I said okay because well, why not?... I had nothing against the dragons, I was nursing a not-so-small grudge against the two main pantheons. Plus, as newcomers, it’d be nice to have allies in the Shattered World’s Heavenly Realm.