4-88-22 (2) Universal Reboot Initiated.

Warning: Insufficient Matter to Perform Big Crunch.

Warning: Insufficient Particle Density to Perform Big Bang.

Universal Reboot Failed.

4-88-22(3) Attempting Universal Collapse Protocols

Commencing Universal Collapse Protocol 1/15,761.

* Excerpt from Universe 25 Error Report: Series 1.43.611, Log 707.32.02

It was difficult to tell but it looked to be the size of a border collie. It seemed to be some kind of beetle, though its features seemed hazy, except for the 6 or so vibrant red dots covering its black shell. A mirage? In the movies the mirages were always beautiful women or water, not some demonic hellspawn. I could feel my heart racing and slowly backed up.

It hadn’t seemed to notice me yet so I dropped below the lip of my dune, keeping my head just above the top.

Life hadn’t been easy, I was certainly more lucky than some, but suffice it to say, I didn’t have a lot of irrational fears left over, except one. Bugs. I hated bugs. I would squish them for mom or Kate and act all brave, but inside I was terrified they were about to pounce before I got them with the napkin, or that they were going to crawl up my arm.

Irrational? Absolutely. Were there any harmful bugs in Canada? A case could be made of mosquitos, black flies, wasps, and deer flies in the summer, but overall, no. Regardless, I couldn’t stand them. The usual ones I was used to, I wouldn't be able to get anything done in the summer if I couldn’t, but any of the creepy crawly ones…

The impossibly large beetle mirage lifted its wing shell parts and fluttered them in the sun, making a soft chittering scuffling noise as it did so. I almost puked. My entire body, moments ago sweating from heat, was now covered in a cold sweat of dread. I had seen enough.

I began to shuffle back along the sand, losing sight of the beetle as my head dropped below the peak and I began to army crawl between the small sandy dunes. I didn’t have a clue where I should go, but aimed for the trees I had seen, simply to get away from that beetle.

“That decides it,” I muttered as I continued to army crawl through the hot sand, “I’m definitely in Hell. That or Purgatory.” I looked up, seeing if my blasphemy had evoked any strong reactions from the sky.

The suns continued to beat down, but otherwise the sky remained normal, if not slightly yellow-tinged. Maybe from the heat?

I didn't think I had lived a life deserving of Purgatory or Hell, but some versions of God were pretty ruthless. Maybe this was a test or a sick joke. Maybe they didn’t care? Who knows.

I had guessed the Oasis to be a few kilometers away, so I couldn’t crawl there. After about 5 minutes of playing in the sand I finally got the courage to get up again.

Like a gopher I popped my head up, looked left and right, then behind me. Dropped down for a few seconds, then popped back up again and repeated the action a few more times.

If this is some sick joke or game, hopefully making a fool of myself is entertaining enough. Frankly, as long as they don’t send more bugs I’ll put on clown makeup and make balloon animals. Finally satisfied, I stood up, dusted off my pants. Then set off to the trees at a brisk walk. I didn’t know if that beetle was alone and the suns were getting pretty hot.

The dread began to fade as the minutes passed, and if not for the two suns above creating a slightly distorted shadow I could have just been in Texas or something.

"Two suns isn’t that weird, right?” I consoled myself, “no reason to freak out, this will all be fine." If my voice hadn’t cracked on fine I might’ve believed it too. It probably wasn’t going to be fine. But, it was fine right now, which would have to do. So I walked and I pretended the double shadows were normal; and I tried not to think about getting stabbed what felt like 15 minutes ago. I tried not to think about being dead. Or maybe I wasn’t dead? Checking my neck I still had a pulse. My skin still felt warm and soft to the touch. A little pudgy even.

"Alright Will, how about we keep the insecurities to one at a time please? You can choose between the dread of being dead or for being a size larger than you’d like; you don't get both.” If I had known I would be facing some post-death purgatory challenge I would’ve used the hotel’s gym more. Oh well, next time I suppose.

I began to wonder about how my death might affect Kate and Mom, and how they would make ends meet. Then decided that was more than enough dismal thinking and began to jog to the trees. No time like the present to get in shape.

Once I began periodically jogging it took me about 30 mins to get to the trees. My guess had been correct, it was an oasis, though I had drastically underestimated the size. I had imagined a body of water no larger than a pond, but was faced with a pretty sizable lake. A kilometer or two wide and a few kilometers long. The trees I had seen in the distance seemed to be some form of palm tree, though unlike any I had ever seen. In addition to the usual palm fronds there was also large spikes sticking out from the head of the tree, making it look like a bunch of leafy maces dotted the landscape. There were also bush versions of these spiky palms dotting the hilly dunes surrounding the oasis. Aside from spiky plants, the oasis looked exactly how I had imagined it. Blue pristine waters, rolling sandy hills, all I needed was a drink with an umbrella and I could've been on vacation.

I was just glad to be near water though, jogging had kept my thoughts from taking a deep dive, but had also exhausted me and made me sweat out most of my water. Not my smartest plan, I needed to be smarter than that. I couldn’t be so reactive. I didn’t know what would happen if I died a second time, but I really didn’t feel like finding out what afterlife version 2 would bring.

As I approached the water I realized how dangerously close to exhaustion I had come. I hadn’t felt it until stepping into the oasis, but I had a headache that was to the point it was causing my ears to ring. I must have been much more dehydrated than I thought. It was to the point that I could barely hear the ambient sounds of the desert by the time I kneeled down to get a drink due to how aggressively my ears were ringing.

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There didn't seem to be any insects or anything gross swimming around in the lake, and I briefly considered the danger of parasites or something.

"If I'm dead then this water probably can't hurt me more” I argued. And what if I’m not dead? It was a thought I had mostly dismissed, of course I was dead, I was just too much of a coward to remember the final moment. Since I’m such a coward anyway, if I’m not dead, if there is anything in this water, hopefully it’s lethal.

I brought my cupped hands to my mouth, and my dark thoughts were erased as the most refreshing water I had ever tasted filled my mouth. It tasted like I had sipped it right from a green leaf in a rainstorm in some jungle where humans had never existed. My headache remained, but my aches and pains rapidly vanished. I was just leaning down to dunk my whole head in the water when I heard the faintest scuffle behind him, barely a scratch in the sand.

If my day hadn't been so awful, and if I hadn’t been listening for giant bugs for the last 30 minutes, I probably wouldn't have heard anything. But my day had been awful, and I had been listening for giant bugs, so my nerves were piano-string tight. That small scuffle was enough to launch me to the side and onto my feet. With my revitalized muscles, that water truly was amazing, my dodge to the side was successful as I felt something sharp barely graze my rolling shoulder as it flew by and landed in the shallow water. I steadied himself, shoulder burning slightly from the surface scratch. My heart was immediately racing, and I already felt like I couldn't get enough breath. I looked up at my attacker, expecting to see the giant beetle I had been running from, but instead found a cat-sized green monkey?

“What the shit is this now?” On closer inspection it wasn’t a monkey at all, I didn’t know what it was, but it had the lanky body of a monkey, the head of a lizard or iguana, soft scales running down its entire body, and 2 pairs of red angled eyes. These eyes were locked on me now as it bared its sharp canines, one of which was dripping a small drop of red blood. My blood.

It seemed to be more cautious now, taking me in even as I was taking it in. But that caution passed quickly and it prepared to pounce again, raising its scaled hips as it got low to build power for the leap.

As for me, I was fighting a potent internal conflict between fear, confusion, shock, and fear again. Discovering that my body could produce two versions of fear was doing nothing for me and I wrestled to do something, anything.

Too slow. The monkey-lizard leaped, fangs bared, scaled arms outstretched as it knocked into me with surprising force, knocking the both of us to the ground while it attempted to tear out my throat.

If I hadn't been stabbed an hour ago, I might have died then and there, still trying to figure out if I was scared or shocked. Luckily, or unluckily, that was not the case, I may have gone down stunned, but this was not my first life-or-death encounter in the last hour. My throat was an inch from being ripped out when I finally kicked into action. My hands shot forward to hold the creature’s snapping jaws at bay. Once it realized my throat was out of reach it pivoted its head and bit down into the next closest thing; my left arm.

Unlike the knife, I felt this one. Its teeth weren't long enough to pierce all the way through, but they drew a great deal of blood and the sensation of teeth piercing my skin almost knocked me out as a scream of pain and horror erupted from my throat. The small, tenacious monkey-lizard tore at my arm, and fought to get a good grip on the thing with my right arm. Finally gaining a firm hold I flung the beast to the side, rolling with it. My arm was still held firmly in the things mouth and I felt more pain as my arm was pulled in painful directions. I rolled until I was on top and tried to use my elbow to collapse its windpipe. Unfortunately, my elbow slid past the things surprisingly muscular neck and instead slammed into its jaw. The pressure on my left arm released as its jaw slackened which allowed me to quickly pull it free. The struggle continued for a few more tense moments until I found a rock with my right hand and brought it down hard on the creatures head over and over again until it stopped moving. Even then I kept striking the head until it had completely caved in and my arm had grown sore from the impacts.

Shakily extracting myself from the massacre, I stared at the gore-encrusted rock in my white-knuckled grip, then down at the nightmare that I had destroyed with it.

"What the hell? …..What the hell? What-the-hell, what-the-hell, what-the-hell?" was all I could muster before I dropped to my knees and promptly vomited. It felt like I expelled everything I had eaten and drank in the last week as my situation collapsed onto me, the sounds of retching into the dry sand punctuated by gasping sobs my only companions.

My vision was growing black at the edges, and I could feel the world closing in on me. Was the entire world about to vanish again like it had in the alleyway? At least I had stayed conscious for the kill this time. But this wasn’t that. I knew these symptoms, I'd fainted once before when life had become too overwhelming and I hadn’t dealt with it. I just needed to control my breathing.

I had finally stopped vomiting but was rapidly hyperventilating myself to a blackout. I forced myself to take large gasping breaths. I looked around, frantically trying to assure myself that I wasn’t in danger. There weren't more of these abominations in the trees. I was safe, I just needed to breathe. Looking at those trees, I counted them, trying to take my mind off of the panic it was soaked in.

Gradually, painfully, my breathing slowed down and my heart stopped trying to burrow out of my chest. My stomach ached with pain from such rapid evacuation, but at least I was calming down. No sooner had my stomach and lungs relaxed than my head began pounding with a potent headache accompanied by a crescendoing ringing in my ears.

"Fuck me, can everything just chill for like 5 minutes?!" I cried into the ground as I held my head in my hands, attempting to soothe the rising pounding between my ears.

Was I dying all over again? Was my mind finally fracturing? Maybe the true torment of Hell was to abandon you in a desert, give you no answers, and then send demon monkeys to break you? What did it say about me that it only took 1 for me to break?

The ringing and the pounding rose and rose. I had closed my eyes now, once again in a universe void of light and only consisting of pain. I returned to that place where time seems meaningless and prayed for it to end.

I had no idea how long I lay there, I was vaguely aware that I was completely exposed, but with my head splitting in half I couldn’t bring myself to care. I counted seconds, I recited architectural terms, I listed every movie I had ever seen, I did anything I could think of to take me away from that awful pain. It hardly helped. I could have been there for hours or minutes, time had no meaning.

Then suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, the ringing and pain rushed out of my head and spread through my whole body as a cool refreshing breeze. It was like something had been building up in my head and had finally had enough power to blast through whatever barrier it was up against. The pain was gone and the ringing had completely stopped. I panted with relief into the sand, feeling small puffs of grit bounce against my face with each breath.

When I finally opened my eyes to look at the sand below me I was met not by the pool of saliva I expected to be there, but, for the 2nd time that day, by a translucent screen floating in my vision.

I jerked upwards and it followed, remaining locked in my sight line, appearing as a ghostly piece of parchment in the bright, desert light.

It appeared blank save for a title at the top of the parchment that read “Universal Interface” and a few bold lines in the centre.

Congratulations.

Sufficient Experience Earned from Gained Achievements.

Universal System of Progression Unlocked.

Universal Interface Unlocked.

Occupant, Welcome to the GammaGrid.