“Jonathan Tillman, You have a... talent for thinking outside the box.”

Tilly came to on a rough sawn wooden floor. He sat up, immediately reaching his hands to his head, ready for the onslaught of pain that he was sure would be coming.

“No pain can reach you here. You broke yourself down on the quantum level, temporarily removing yourself completely from time and space. Your imagination has bridged a gap of probability so great that you have just performed one of the most unlikely escapes I have ever seen… I hope you know that means quite a lot coming from me.”

Tilly looked up in confusion and found himself in an achingly familiar cabin.

'Grandad’s place.'

He had only gotten to come here as a kid a few times before Grandad had died, but those summer trips “roughing it” had been some of his best childhood memories. The strangeness of his situation imparted a stolid pace to his thoughts as he struggled to come to terms with what he was experiencing. He turned slowly, breathing in the familiar smell of wood smoke, inspecting the shelf stuffed with tattered books in astonishment, and finally, stood facing the two chairs in front of the fireplace. It all felt so normal… That is, until he saw the burst of light come into being in his grandad’s chair.

An extremely complex network of woven light settled itself in the overstuffed armchair, its shape somehow giving off the impression that it was sitting. The pattern of flowing luminescence was so bright and intricate that as Tilly squinted against its brilliance he had trouble finding where the cabin ended and its form began.

As his eyes adjusted he realized that there was no end to the network, rather it was seamlessly integrated into its surroundings. The strands of light grew less opalescent the farther from the central network they went and faded until they were completely transparent. But as Tilly looked closely he found that they were still very much present weaving everything in the room back towards the center. Tilly uncomfortably followed the few strands that he could spot reaching toward him until they ended in his chest. He looked back up, his mouth dry and face slack as comprehension slowly dawned.

Despite how otherworldly the pattern of light before him looked, he addressed the vaguely humanoid shape in its midst.

“You are Him aren’t you?” Tilly said, addressing the Living Network with something approaching awe.

“It is not incorrect to call me ‘Him’ although it is a little derivative.”

Tilly could practically hear the teasing smile behind the words. In the face of that levity, his fury and sorrow from the last few hours came crashing back, displacing wonder. His mind flooded with questions and accusations. They rose up from the well of pain at his center, jostling for position on his tongue. Before he could make an active election, a few popped out, forming partial thoughts and then dying as he attempted to find some calm in the tumult of his emotions.

“Where were…How could you… All those people...” The questions rose and were choked off. Each one was like a boat capsizing under the onslaught of a stormy sea, not able to fully express the aching pain and furious resentment that suddenly swamped Tilly's heart.

In response Origin’s light dimmed until a fatherly, caramel-skinned man sat before him in something resembling a mechanic's outfit. His eyes crinkled in compassion,

“Why don’t you sit down? We have time but I want to spend it well.”

Confusion warred with anger on Tilly’s face, before they settled into an uneasy truce of suspicion. He slowly approached, watching the now unassuming man sit leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him. Those hands were dirty, but in the way that a gardener's hands would be after a long day working in the soil.

Tilly took his seat, struggling with what to say. Origin just sat there with a look of concern painted across his face in broad clear strokes. Something about this kindly demeanor set Tilly even further out of sorts. He seemed to invite Tilly’s questions and for some reason this caused Tilly to hesitate, looking for the right place to begin.

Through it all, Origin sat patiently, maintaining eye contact in a way that invited...something. Demands for answers lived and died on the surface of Tilly's mind as he tried to reconcile his expectations with the calm reality that sat before him. Finally, he settled for the one that had haunted him for days as he fought against Corruption on multiple fronts.

“How could you let this happen? Can’t you do something?”

“Yes… That is always a tough one,” Origin said leaning back into his chair, with a sigh.

“If I wanted, I could wipe away all of Corruption. I could dispose of evil in a moment and claim the throne of the souls of men with power and glory… But I actively choose not to. And this is very painful. Both for me and for you...” Then he just stopped, looking at Tilly as if he was waiting for something. The silence lingered and then grew as Tilly realized that he didn't plan on continuing.

“And?” Tilly said shocked, expecting at least some sort of defense or explanation.

“And what?” Origin asked, a small smile again quirking the edges of his lips. He was infuriatingly cool in the face of the horrors Tilly had witnessed, both in this life and the last and all of Tilly’s hesitancy disappeared in a puff of smoke,

“WHY?!” Tilly shouted, snarling in rage as he gripped the armrests of the chair so hard that they creaked in protest.

Origin didn’t even flinch at the sudden outburst, he just leaned forward into Tilly’s anger and began to shine.

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The mesmerizing network of complex woven light returned, illuminating a thick pattern flowing outward from his center in two opposite directions. Both continued to be revealed and illuminated until they reached out to an incomprehensible length.

Unable to help himself, Tilly tried to follow the pattern in one direction to its end. His vision doubled and his mind flexed uncomfortably as he saw one end of the pattern both within the one-room cabin and in the infinite distance. Origin's voice echoed eerily over the boundless vista,

“I am, as we speak, standing at the beginning of Time, setting this work into motion. It is a very ambitious work… For I am creating something that has full freedom of choice and I have committed to guarding that freedom until the end,” he said looking in the same direction Tilly had. Tilly could see the beginning of the immeasurable strands of existence, each being pulled into a weave that started simply, yet beautifully. Origins' voice spoke again, drawing Tilly to look in the opposite direction,

“I am also, right now, standing at creation's final moment in Time, watching as what I hold most dear, becomes something far greater.”

Tilly turned slowly, fighting to stay conscious as something akin to mental nausea took his perception through loops. The simple motion of turning his head juxtaposed sickeningly with the terrifying amount of distance his perception covered. As his perception traveled toward the other end of the pattern he noticed that the weave never stopped changing, increasing in complexity and beauty as it moved through time.

When Tilly finally found the end with his eyes, he could more than just see it, he could smell, hear, and taste just how supremely glorious it had become. All of his senses were evoked at once and he was drawn into the very definition of Goodness. It was the smell of freshly baked bread, the taste of summer’s first strawberry, and the crescendo of a symphony all at once. The sensations wrapped around him, drawing him into an embrace that seemed to permeate every part of his being.

His awe returned, striking his soul with a thunderous truth he could not understand. As he struggled to comprehend just what he was seeing, a memory emerged. It rose out of the midst of the tension between his ability to understand and his longing to know.

He was back in his daughter's room, having just arrived home after a long shift. She had stayed up way too late fighting sleep so she wouldn’t miss him.

And as tired as he was, he had charged into the room roaring like a lion and collapsed on his three-year-old in an impromptu tickle attack. The sound of her squeals of delight and laughter echoed through the room as the light of the pattern slowly faded.

His chest constricted and he tried to remember how to breathe, struck dumb by the beauty and the sorrow that welled up in the wake of the memory. He turned back to Origin, who was once again in his human form, and was shocked to find him crying as he too turned away from the scene.

“Jonathan, I am so sorry about your daughter.” He said as tears continued to stream freely down his face. Then, as if nourished by the steady flow of his tears, a small joyful smile bloomed,

“I am, however, happy to tell you that her story is not over. It continues in a different form and you will see her there, at the end.”

The words and the manner in which they were given cut straight to the heart of Tilly’s bitterness. For, if Tilly was to believe them then he would have to let go of all the blame and hatred he had hoarded in his heart for so many years. These were the knives he used to punish himself when he stumbled, the broken glass he scattered around his heart to keep anyone from getting close.

Another memory rose to the surface of his mind. His mother stood over him on his tricycle, an expression of shock and then hot anger twisting her face as she looked down at the shattered porcelain lamp. Slowly she lifted her eyes, her expression too dangerous for his young mind to comprehend. “God Dammit, Jonny! Why do you always break everything?” she hissed at him, almost spitting out the last words. The memory sat like a weight in his stomach, assuring him that no matter what happened in life, everything he touched would end up in ruins.

The laughter of his daughter echoed again through his mind, joined now, by the courageous smile of the little satyr girl, whose name he could not even remember.

His eyes cleared and hope beckoned to him, inviting him to something new... something strange and wonderful. He found Origin still there, waiting… vulnerable.

Tilly’s choice mattered to him. And in that moment, under those eyes, Tilly was frightened to realize that he mattered.

That significance, something that he had chased his whole career in the fire department, gave him the strength he needed to lift the awful weight of guilt off his soul. The burden of decades of self-hatred fell to the floor as Tilly looked into those eyes and found a lightness he couldn’t understand.

He would see his daughter again, he believed it.

“I am very glad you have chosen to try, Jonathan,” - Origin said, his smile less grating than it had been just minutes before.- “Now it is time for you to return... there is much yet left for you to do.”

Then Origin clapped his hands together and stood. Tilly flinched in surprise at the movement and stuttered,

“Wh- Wait! I thought you said we had time?” Tilly stammered, scrambling up out of his chair.

“Jonathan, you have been here for five days. I do not think you would want to miss what is coming for your friends and the new nation you have helped start.” Origin answered, his expression becoming somber.

“Aren’t you going to help me with the Seed? Or at least tell me what to do to help Amelia. The purification Ability isn’t enough. I don't know what to do.” Tilly said, the urgency of his situation beginning to go off like a siren in his mind.

“You already have the answers to your questions… I will not take your freedom to choose from you,” Origin declared, his face growing hard for the first time in their encounter.

“Now go!” The light and then the room itself started to fade around Tilly. He tried not to feel panic as the impending crash back to reality loomed in his mind.

“Can’t you tell me anything else? I have no clue what I am doing out there!”

At this point, the figure and the cabin it had held together in the void were almost completely gone, but Origin’s voice returned one last time,

“You are free, nothing can change that. Use this great gift well...” Then the voice faded into the nothingness leaving Tilly alone.

The blackness around him was absolute. His sense of place and even time was distorted by the infinite emptiness that was both endless and intimate.

Then a pinprick of light burst in front of him. He reached out toward it, as it grew into a marble and then a fist-sized hole of brightness. Tilly watched in fascination as he realized it was hurtling towards him, or he toward it… He couldn’t tell and before he had time to puzzle it out, he was colliding with the now truck-sized opening of light.

The harsh light of day assaulted his eyes and a roaring filled his ears. He blinked rapidly as he covered his head in anguish, fending off the onslaught of reality. Slowly, shapes began to resolve out of the glare in front of him and the roar reduced itself to incomprehensible noise and then finally the sound of voices.

One figure pulled itself away from the milling patchwork of shapes and colors, its form sharpening as it approached.

A face covered in a thin layer of gray fur leaned in close to Tilly, its milky white eyes looking deeply into his own as if they were looking through him, back in time, to what he had just experienced.

“Welcome Home, Gaijin. You are among friends and we are glad you have returned… from wherever you went.”