Here’s something I just now thought about, and really, it’s probably a giant red flag that went right over my head. Of course, if I cared about red flags I’d never get out of bed in the morning, much less have a doomed-to-end-soon relationship with Alice. Also, if I’d been paying attention, this qualified as “foreshadowing”. A Ted concept I detest.

Anyway, here’s the fact to mull over.

Flux knew where to go.

I’ll give you a moment to process that idea. Had your moment? Great, here’s the pop quiz question. How could Flux possibly know where to go on a planet we’d never been to? Which apparently wasn’t even a planet to begin with. There were two possibilities that should have occurred to me. Either Flux relied on some knowledge of the future that it’d come from, or Flux’s existence had been tied to this entire thing. That later one is the truth of it. The call the girls felt, that resonance effect, Flux had it too.

Maybe you need help connecting the other dots. That smiling face in the darkness behind Alice was missing an eye. Flux looked like a damn eye encased in metal. It shouldn’t exist and Hans had no idea how he’d made a thing that went against sanity.

Anyway, there’s the string of ideas that sort of absently floated by as I stared at Alice. She stood on a platform above all five of the girls. Above Flux. In another blink, Alice was some sort of giant monster behind them. Playing with the girls like they were little dolls.

My sister had become a still life figure presenting terror. The trio of girls represented a rapture induced detachment. Never seen that expression? I bet your significant other is also disappointed. Of course, the fifth person in there with Alice was Cindy. She looked utterly indifferent. We don’t care about Cindy.

“Babe?”

I swallowed dryly. Because there’s no other kinds of ways to swallow. Wetly maybe. Dramatically. With piazza.

Attempt two. “Babe?”

The words sounded like they came from someone else’s lips.

“Alice!” I shouted abruptly. My voice echoed against fucking nothing and swum around the room. Dozens of images appeared above my head. All of them me. I spun in a circle and they spun too. Eyes wide and mouth open. Some still shouted as the echo continued.

My companion’s dull humming halted. The papers Flux had copied all abruptly slammed down. Their sudden thud drowned out my own lingering words. I stared down and saw the artwork decorating all of them. Some were done in crayon by a child who couldn’t figure out how to color in the lines. Others were obsessively detailed.

I saw myself, a stick figure doodle of a man. It made me sick and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe I knew but it hung at the edge of my consciousness and threatened to make my brain shut down entirely if it was realized.

“What’s going on?”

Flux’s body hadn’t moved from it’s partly assembled form. It hovered in still motion inside the bubble’s former radius.

“Alice?” I shouted again. Her name echoed and died as the emptiness about us swallowed the sound. I spun in a circle. The pile of dead bodies from before, those that hadn’t quiet been swallowed up, were all dissolving. Even the Purple Prose started deflating. It reminded me of a blow-up toy losing air.

“Toys,” Alice’s voice thundered. My ears screamed as the sound continued. Everything shook. Even the blackness above. A vibrant shot of purple lanced through with the pattern of television static.

My knees hit the ground hard.

That faded. I gasped for air. Everything felt thin.

Alice’s hand waved toward the face then pulled back. The smile twitched and something came off the lip. A small sliver of impossible light. The air around me came back. A solid dose of oxygen hit my lungs lifting my mind into a spinning height where everything amused me.

It faded quick as throbbing from my knees registered. One ear rang, sounding like Flux’s beeping as it stretched somewhere in the background.

I spun. In the distance semi-recognizable shapes danced. Space bent at weird angles. I couldn’t look or my head would start hurting. It felt like the edges of the horizon were only a few feet away and somehow miles at the same time. If that doesn’t make sense, try getting drunk, fall down some stairs, then count your fingers and realize you’re actually counting streetlights. It was that.

My brain tried to sort it out but came up empty. We were firmly into what-the-fuck territory.

I mustered up the strength to yell again. “Alice!”

She continued being motionless. Alice, the stranger merger between the two I knew, stared upward at the one-eyed smile floating in the background. Her body twisted, jerked, or maybe my eyesight spun around. In a split sound I found myself staring down at her. Or her watching up me. I couldn’t tell because everything felt fuzzy.

I turned to look at the dead bodies. The pile of part sand endless copies, courtesy of Flux, were still flattening. Their forms turning into parts of an endless plane where the horizon swallowed everything. It made me sicker. I put them out of my brain for the umpteenth time.

Alice didn’t response to any of my cries. I tried thinking of words that might trigger her. Sex. Baby making. Twins. Triplets. Stabbing mole people. The brief thought of me having sex with Jade flashed through and nothing happened. Lightning should have zapped me dead for that last one, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

The light show kept going. Every single color in the crayon box crawled along the ground like octopus tentacles reaching out for a snack. I turned slowly and watched as one grabbed at the deflating pile of bodies. It pulsed a neon red then the bodies vanished. A green sliver of whatever traveled by, swimming along the flat surface but not once making a ripple. It too pulsed, and weapons that Flux had copied turned into air.

There was too much going on for me to keep it straight. Something needed to go. I turned away from Alice in hopes that the world behind me had grown simpler. It had, but the sight still bothered me.

Bodies continued to vanish in batches. Almost like an eraser or something else simply wiped them out of existence. Beyond that mass of corpses, the blackened horizon grew foggy. Grey obscured the distant horizon and brought everything closer. Where the corpses had been, flat ground reflected grey fog above exactly as a still lake would in the morning.

Once again, I couldn’t watch. My head lolled downward and both eyes closed. Whatever happened next, I knew Alice wouldn’t be the same. She might be gone. In the wake of her leaving, I wouldn’t be myself anymore. It was the kind of knowledge that made you sick somewhere deeper than simple stomach lining. Down there in some vague area that might house the tattered remains of my soul.

That center of my being that had survived demon possession, family sundering, the deaths of countless around me and everything in between, braced for the impact then tried to deny that we were about to be hit. Why? Because this was the end she’d mentioned. That dream Alice who’d warned me weeks ago. When we met again, it’d be almost too late.

“Too late,” she said.

I didn’t open my eyes. That somehow made the thundering of her voice feel softer. That brief soft tone from her made me smile sadly. Then all I could think about is that I should have been here sooner. I should have stayed with the trio of girls and made us march faster toward their source. They were three, a trio, pieces to that would come together. The other girls were pieces of this mess too, or there’d be no resonance effect.

Was it them, or their powers? It had to be the abilities they’d been given. Somehow it all related. I opened my eyes to stare at the girls. None of them looked normal anymore. Brittney’s face had a sheen of wet flesh colored paint.

“Out there,” Alice’s almost-a-question trailed off into nothingness.

Let’s not think about the deeper meanings behind Alice’s words in the dream. Not right now. We’ll instead focus on other questions that aren’t helpful. Was my own power protecting me from turning into toy dolls like the girls, or something else? Did Alice had a shred of concern in her brain that prevented her from turning me into a mindless puppet? Or had my powers come from another source so they weren’t resonating?

Answering those question was impossible. Let’s be honest, I couldn’t really register critical thinking skills because every time I had a stray thought, Alice’s voice would echo a word or two and my legs buckled again. Such as this time, when I thought about belonging out there somewhere and found myself throwing up on a mirror like surface that could have been the ground or a shard of some fuck-wits imagination.

I managed to get upright again and look behind me. Now the edges of the cave system I’d been crawling around in were visible. Giant chunks of shadow covered floated through the foggy air. They crunched together slowly, becoming compact before falling to the ground.

Forward I went. If I couldn’t get her to answer me, then maybe I could shake someone until they woke up. Up became down and the space in front of me twisted into pretzel. My stomach heaved in protest.

“Alice?” I shouted.

It wasn’t working. My demands for clarity weren’t getting through.

“Clarity.” Thunder rained down in the form of Alice’s voice.

I didn’t bother getting up this time. There were only so many times my body could be slammed toward the ground by an overwhelming mental distortion. I had never been the hero. Standing up ands creaming against the odds did me no good.

But I could keep my eyes open and watch her.

Light shimmered beneath me. Tendrils of a rainbow shot out, snagging at something unseen behind me. My head didn’t work right. Muscles seized every time I tried to twist myself around and see. The pinch grew until my shoulder blades tightened. My leg spasmed. It’d been ages since anything left me in this much pain. Nearly every time I’d been put into a disaster, it’d come and gone quickly. The damage would get undone by some magical angel from above healing me. Or it’d be a dream. Or the deep wounds would really be merely surface damage.

My neck refused to move. Both eyes were drifting down. I knew if they closed, Alice would be gone and that’d be the end of our time together. Nothing more would happen, and I’d be doomed to wander through the rest of life with a jigsaw puzzle version of Flux and never have a chance at companionship.

“I deserve this,” I mumbled.

I couldn’t say if that meant losing Alice, being alone, or having her. My brain couldn’t put those thoughts together. Even the few blips of coherent thought that hit me were mostly flashbacks of my life. My sister’s legs being hurt. My parents leaving.

Jade. We’d been captives together in some event or another, and she couldn’t risk hanging around me for more than an hour. We had history but not ability. Even that other girl, Tina, Ice Princess, she’d been nice enough. She’d die eventually by hanging around me.

Alice couldn’t. She couldn’t, and I needed that god dammit.

My nose tingled.

Alice stood there, distracted by the smile in the background. That smile seemed to stare down at me, or her, like a giant pirate. For a moment I wondered what it’d be like to see Alice from that angle. I wanted to be that powerful. So much that even WhiteWash and Midnight’s little world altering powers would be nothing in comparison.

Then it really registered. They weren’t even remotely real looking anymore. All five of the girls were glorified toys. Human sized dolls and store-bought ponies. My eyes tightened and shook it off. In a blink, they were mostly real again. All five stared off into the distance with unfocused vision.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Lights slithered along the underside of the mirror I laid upon. They continued to wipe away all other materials from existence. I waited for the end. I mean, what other options were there? Flux hadn’t stopped being a frozen jig-saw puzzle. My sister and the other four were still, floating in a semi-circle mid air around Alice exactly like possessed witches channeling some greater power.

Then it hit me. I’d gotten so numb over the years that maybe I could try a little harder to do something. Such as check on the girls. I could pull one of them out of position and maybe break this whole mess.

I stepped forward. The entire time I berated myself for simply ignoring them. Sure, for a second they’d like life sized dolls, but maybe that had to do with reality collapsing about us. I’d seen that level of nonsense before. Not that I could figure out where at the moment.

If nothing else, I wanted to see what had happened to them. We’d been traveling together for weeks and I was sort of their teacher. That meant something. A responsibility I couldn’t ignore just to try and make sense of my life falling apart around me. I’d survive this and record their names in my video blog. The latest causalities in The Fiasco’s endless disaster-thon.

I managed to get to my feet and survive the pain. Which is the beauty of my life. I knew that no matter what happened, I’d survive. My legs could shatter into a billion pieces and shortly after it’d be made whole again, somehow. Immortality made me cavalier about my own health. It’s just, normally it also made me indifferent about doing anything to stop these sorts of events from happening.

The air thinned again. I held my breath and barged in slow motion by Flux. It got harder to get enough oxygen. Spots appeared. Their blackness blended in with everything else. I looked down and found myself following the tentacles of vibrant color back to their source.

“Stop,” Alice thundered.

I managed to keep on my feet. My head lifted back. “Alice! What are you doing to my sister!”

One of her eyes blinked. Then other. I traveled another few feet but each step hurt. It didn’t matter. Pain could be overcome. I had to get to Brittney and push her out. Maybe if she broke away, then this whole nightmare might get manageable.

On I went.

Alice stared at the face in the sky. My head hurt. The other girls made their faces. Flux did nothing useful. I marched exactly forever across the distance and made it to the girls. Sure, I’m simplifying but I know you’re tired of hearing me repeat myself. Let’s just say it took a long time.

Exactly forever. Then I find myself clutching Brittney’s arm helplessly. Years later and we were in the same position. Her, so far gone that her brain couldn’t process anything. Me, useless and unable to stop whatever was happening about us.

The trio of girls fell.

Cindy and the midnight unicorn froze. Her hair became stringier than normal and his gloss dimmed.

Brittany’s body slammed onto the ground. My sister’s face blurred and in a second she turned into an actual toy doll on a pink pony. The kind of store-bought plaything that could be purchased at any supermarket. I tried to understand before looking at the other four again.

They were all like that. The college girls were lanky plastic versions of themselves. Their clothes were cheap nylon stitching barely held together by some sweatshop’s sewing machine.

My heart stopped. My brain too. It’d already been mush but this set me over the edge. Somewhere in the back of my brain, that part of me that responded to absurdity with sarcasm, broke. It suggested that I should fall on the ground too because we were playing Ring-Around-The-Rosy.

I blinked slowly and stared at all five of them. They were all giant toys. Worse, they seemed to be shrinking.

“What is going on?” I mumbled.

Someone touched my shoulder. I flinched then turned slowly to look behind me. Alice stood over me. Her slender fingers sat on my shoulder. Strands of hair shimmered in a strange dark rainbow. She smiled and I couldn’t find it in me to play along.

The moment hung on while my brain tried to process. My sister and the others were all still shrinking. Even the giant horses I’d stumbled by earlier had grown smaller.

Then my thoughts kicked into gear.

“This isn’t exactly what I’d planned for our next date.”

Alice smiled and shook her head. A shimmer of every collected color went through her hair. Black lanced down her skin breaking up the pale completion. Red spiral after it, like thunder lancing along under her skin. As if Alice’s body held a world inside of it.

“I understand it all now, Adam.”

“That sounds great.” It didn’t. It sounded like a literal nightmare given form. You know, kind of like the one I stood in. With my sister being a fuzzy doll version of herself. Not to mention her, and my plastic parents, being sucked into the darkness around that smiling face.

“Time to put everything away, Adam,” she said.

I looked back and where the endless pile of dead bodies had been. They were nearly all gone now. The rest of this world had vanished into the encroaching mist. I gulped then slid my sister behind me. Out of Alice’s line of sight.

“Looks like everything’s been put away already,” I said. “Fun game. Let’s play again soon.”

“Anytime you’d like to play with me, I’m more than willing.” Alice grinned, and for a moment I had my mad, beautiful girlfriend back.

She stepped back. With one motion her body moved dozens of feet away and into the air. Hovering between me and that grinning face that made me sick.

She stretched both arms wide and her fingers curled. Pressure made my ears pop. My sister’s toy body slipped out of my fingers and through my body without an ounce of resistance. Up it went, into the sky toward that smiling face. I tried to move but couldn’t. Both legs stayed locked in place.

It disappeared. The other girls flew away one by one. I couldn’t afford to be nauseous. Not then. It didn’t make it any easier. My stomach already felt uneasy. The salty taste in my throat lingered.

Alice turned and waved at something in the distance. Other objects flew through the fog and returned, I guess that’s the right word, to the smiling face in the sky. More flew by. I closed my eyes because that seemed better than watching whatever was being recalled from out there.

The entire time my mind kept having one of those thoughts. The ones that you recognize and can think about, but refuse to because it’s so revolting that your mind tries to abort existence rather than finish connecting the dots. I think I’ve said that before. That my brain kept trying to curl up and pretend nothing else had been happening. It’d never really stopped.

That’s because the worst was on the way.

Time passed. I couldn’t say how much because that would have required thought.

When I opened my eyes, the only things still visible in any direction were fog, Flux, that fucking face, and Alice.

She stood in front of me bouncing on her toes in excitement.

“I’ve just had the most wonderful idea. We should get married.” She smiled and threw up her hands. “Then we can share everything. What’s mine is yours. What’s yours is mine. You’ll never be sad again!”

I didn’t know what that meant to her. Alice’s thoughts had always been slightly askew on a good day. Instead of trying to unravel her deeper meanings, I focused on a simple fact.

“I don’t have a ring.”

Her head tilted to the side and smiled. It was the kindest smile. Not because of her face. If I were objective, her face had a deranged broken puppet sort of framing. I could feel her. It was kindness. Warm and fuzzy. A bit amused and happy. A promise of better things to come as the world crashed around me.

“I do.” Her head tilted in delightful creepiness. “Or did until they stole it. But it’s mine again.”

She frowned. “Or is it?”

“It’s so hard to keep track. Realities gone fuzzy and I can’t quiet keep what’s coming back separate from what’s going out. But I know there was a ring somewhere in here. Or we can make the best ring ever. I asked you to marry me. So, I have to get to get the ring!”

I stepped toward her but Alice’s body floated away, or somehow stayed at the same distance. It felt like we weren’t in the same place despite her touching me on the shoulder moments before. Given everything else that had happened being in slightly separate layers of reality felt normal.

There are bits of madness I could cope with. In light of everything that had happened since I stepped back through the doorway left the boys behind, Alice not existing in the same plane as me was downright simple. I could handle it.

Alice plucked at the dark sky. A kitchen sink fell to the ground beside me. Its basin slowly slid into the reflective ground before a tendril of yellow snaked by and wiped it away.

She frowned then continued pulling at nothingness. A car fell down. Followed by the top end of a tank and a gargoyle statue from some building. They were wiped away seconds later. Noises came out without objects attached to them. Colors arced across the sky and space warped.

Ever seen someone turn and pluck something out of nothing? It makes zero sense. I want you to image that you’re sitting in your bedroom. Or car. Or on a hill with grass everywhere. A duck appears. Right fucking there. Part of your brain knows it’s happening but then it dismisses it. Maybe you simply didn’t see the duck land. Now it’s on your stomach without any warning. It quacks. You jump. The mallard laughs and suddenly it’s gone.

Whatever Alice kept plucking at had the same dreamy, jumpy feeling. A whale came into being. Its body spun and became misty. That mist winked at me then swirled together into nothing. A potted plant appeared seconds later. It belly flopped to the ground and clay shattered across the mirror beneath my feet. A brushing sound filled the air as someone swept it away.

“Another world, another mess,” the invisible janitor muttered in a thick Russian accent. An old cassette Walkman bobbed along. “Always messes. No one cleans.”

The new guy turned and walked away. His body vanished. Alice continued to pluck at the sky. I closed my eyes for a moment to fight back the nausea. Seeing nothing was easier than watching Alice break reality. Far easier than realizing whatever powers let her pull weapons of the air had only been the surface of what she could do.

I’d seen some weird shit over the years. Some of it purely disgusting. Other events were violent. This, this felt like staring at a mirror and thinking it was fine. Only it wasn’t fine, it was shattered and existed somewhere other than where you were looking. And if that makes no sense, then imagine how I felt. In a place where reality sort of didn’t exist.

Now imagine your girlfriend, a woman you’d been doing the deed repeatedly with, been chased around by during attempted murder, and introduced to your parents as the love of your fucked-up life. Sorry, lost track for a moment, but imagine Alice, whatever I’ve told you of her, pulling at the edges of unmade space in search of a wedding ring. Or engagement band. Whatever stage we were at.

Flux beeped. Nevermind that its body still sat in a floating jigsaw mockery of its normal form.

Alice stopped then tilted her head in a delightfully murderous way. Both her arms shot up as if pulled by strings. Flux’s pieces spun and something at the center, where its red eyeball should have been, pulsed and spun. My eyes hurt when looking at the core of it.

She continued to smile and plucked at the air between her and Flux’s body. That bit at the core of my robotic stalker flew toward the sky. Alice’s hand stretched out to intercept it. The face behind her continued to smile its creepy detached grin, uncaring of her catching the toy before it’d been put away.

Alice lifted the object in her hand to the sky and it juxtaposed against the missing eyeball from the floating face. Then she let go of the shining orb and pulled at the air again, with both hands. The smile behind her collapsed into a swirl of white lights that flowed into the palm of her hands.

I swallowed stoically. Which is much better sounding than swallowing dryly, or bravely.

Alice cupped the melting pot of Flux’s core and that smiling face. Her hand tilted back and forth, rolling around the material. I tried to ignore her motions and only watch her. To memorize everything I could before it was too late.

Time passed. I don’t know how much. I should have been hungry or needed to go to the bathroom, but wherever we were, it was beyond mundane needs. Alice continued to condense the material into one hand and further rolled it around. It shimmered brightly then started to cool. She put a finger to her lips to shush someone but didn’t look up.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I like your dress,” I said abruptly. My eyebrows tightened. She’d already thanked me for something I hadn’t said yet.

Alice smiled.

We were out of sync. My right hand came out abruptly. Fingers spread. She slid the molten liquid over my ring finger. I only got a brief glimpse of the uncooled liquid before Alice distracted me.

“I know it hurts,” Alice said. “But it’s already over.”

I screamed as my fingers melted under the impossibly hot metal. Both ears popped and all sound died. The beating of my own pulse grew strong enough for my chest to pop, before it too melted. Then the pain faded as she kissed me. The knot in my back loosened and my leg felt miles better. Both wobbly knees felt almost normal again.

My fingers moved and body shook.

In the space of a breath, Alice reminded me that pain is transitory but sorrow lasts so much longer. I stared at her. She was there. She was a million miles away. Her body barely existed. A wisp of a ghost of an absent afterthought that could be seen through.

“Please don’t go,” I said with all the steadiness of a man who hadn’t just been mauled by immense pain.

The ring on my finger felt warm but Alice’s body continued to fade. I managed to jerk a leg forward and stumbled toward her. Alice’s form stayed still as I grew closer. She smiled and I managed to break out into a run.

Where Alice should of have was nothing and everything.

The weird plane I’d been standing in shifted. Forward I fell. Something heavy thudded then echoed softly. My face pressed against her body, or the mirrorlike ground. My body sliding into the surface to be absorbed, like everything else. And as I fell through her, she whispered into my ear. With all the sweetness of her blond self. The one that simply wanted to hold onto someone and know she wasn’t crazy. Her voice also had the wildness of her dark-haired self. Who lived each moment as desire dictated.

What she said in that strange voice, I couldn’t tell you. Flux didn’t record it. My brain couldn’t hear it. I remember reaching out. I remember trying to grab on and keep her here. Then everything stopped existing. When I woke up there was this emptiness where my thoughts should be. It went on for hours.

According to the reactivate Flux’s recording, there were two facts of note about my new situation. I sat in the forest atrium of the moon base. To my left sat half a purple cake. But for me, that punch to the soul I’d been bracing for finally came, and my mind shut down. Who the fuck could care about a cake when the greatest thing in your life was gone?

***

Oddity Study Highlights

Name: The Source

Translated from Technobabble by Captain Longhall, the sucker currently in charge of Area 51

A few months back, or at least seventeen bottles of Jack, which might not be a few months. It might be last week, because functional livers are for suckers. Anyway, a few months back I managed to get a question out to that room full of psychic monkey’s and their typewriters.

I won’t explain how I got the question out of this stupid locked room where I’ve been reviewing casework from decades of super powered horseshit. You figure that out for yourself.

I will say that the room full of monkeys magically transformed from forty of the shit flingers, to five hundred. Then that five hundred spent six weeks murdering each other in a frenzy and defecating on the corpses of those defeated. And I mean defecated. Like they wouldn’t stop. Apparently, the shit piles got so high that they had to throw in a micro black hole, because no one wanted to clean it up.

One survived, and it had to be put down. I’ve since been informed that I am not allowed to ask any more questions out loud. Which is why I’m putting them all in these reports. I hope to fuck you already asked a bunch of them in my place, because it’d be pretty unfair if you got to learn all this the easy way.

Either way, here was my question. If, as we’ve already established, all these powers stem by a etheric reality bubble field thing, and if that source is collectively fueled and created by the psyche of all self-aware creatures in existence, then what happens if the source itself gains self-awareness?