I awoke to find myself nowhere. I could feel my body, after a fashion, but absolutely everything else was lost in a void of absolutely perfect darkness.

Everything except Andalon—or, well, her voice, at any rate.

“Mr. Genneth! I do not like it here!” she squealed in terror. “Andalon does not like it here!”

On that, we were in perfect agreement. I wanted to get away from here, wherever ‘here’ was.

Fortunately, I seemed to be able to walk like normal, which is to say, I just did it. Considering I didn’t seem to have a body at the moment, it was actually kind of neat. I could even feel my legs all the way down to the tips of my toes. Not only that: I couldn’t feel my tail—and yeah, I considered that a good thing—though, when I tried touching my lower back just to be sure, I discovered there was nothing to grab.

I was there, and yet, I wasn’t.

Yet it was still somewhat preferable to my increasingly inhuman body.

“No no no no no!” Andalon jabbered, frantically.

She didn’t share my momentary contentment.

“Mr. Genneth!” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me! It’s scary here!”

True enough.

She looked around with wide-eyed fear.

“Alright, uh… here.” I imagined holding my hand out to her. “Grab my hand.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What is hand?” she asked.

Rummaging through my thoughts, it didn’t take long to find a memory of something I knew Andalon would understand. Unfortunately, it was rather embarrassing.

“Uh…” A gulp burbled down my non-existent throat. “Wyrmeh claws,” I said, awkwardly.

“I get it!” she said.

Of course she did.

There wasn’t any air to breathe, but I took a deep breath anyway.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

She nodded. “Supah ready!”

We walked without bodies in this place without light, on route to Angel-knows-where. Eventually, however, Andalon seemed to find something.

“There, Mr. Genneth!” she shouted. “There! There’s a thing!”

And so there was. Somehow, In the distance, I saw something: a light. A teensy, tiny grain of Moonlight, glinting from maybe a mile away.

It got bigger as we walked toward it.

Noticing I wasn’t feeling the least bit fatigued, I just winged it and ran, which sped things up mightily. The speck of light grew into a mote, and then a chunk, and then a rectangular entryway.

A doorway in the darkness.

I felt curiosity waft over from Andalon. Stepping toward it, I looked inside. I caught a glimpse of something like a landscape, only for an unseen force pulled me in, and—suddenly—I was there.

The void was gone, as was the doorway. But plenty of other things for me to see, and all of them were made of cubes.

By the Godhead.

I was in a cube-world; a dreamworld of cubic blocks, each three feet to a side. I stood on an expansive, impossibly flat plain. A mix of greens, yellows, and browns covered the ground in short, unmoving strips.

Grass, I realized.

It was supposed to be grass.

A poor sketch of a river cut through the flat plain, tiled with blocks of “water”—oddly motionless, and as blue as food coloring. Stylized violet flowers—irises, perhaps?—adorned the riparian blocks, alongside what I think were pineapple bushes?

I consulted my perfect memory.

Yep, they were pineapple bushes, though they weren’t very true to life. Their main identifiers were the crude, faceted pineapple fruits that grew from some of them.

Then, there were the “trees” that dotted the landscape on either side of the river. The “leaves” of these “trees” were just blocks of green texture riddled with many small gaps. The leaf-blocks were clustered on and around the three-to-five-block-tall stacks that served as the “tree trunks”. There were two-dimensional apples scattered among the verdure. And not just regular apples, but golden apples. Their metallic surfaces glistened like fire in the daylight.

I winced.

Fudge, that’s bright…

I lifted my hand to my forehead to make a visor for my face.

That was when I saw it.

My arm.

I no longer had hands.

My arm—

—I checked the other one—

—Sword stab me!—

—I screamed.

Both of my arms were now slender, rectangular blocks. All I had in the way of hands were these peachy, flesh-tone stubs located at the tips of my arm-blocks. I’d also lost my right to have wrists; instead, the flesh tones of my hands suddenly changed to stark white—the sleeve of my medical coat.

Then I looked down, and I screamed some more.

They’d gotten my legs, too.

My legs were now two rectangular blocks, firmly planted on the flat, pale-yellow texture-surface underfoot. My favorite pair of slacks were just dark, brown textures covered by the hem of my coat. My loafers were darker, browner textures at the stubby bottom of my block legs.

Panicking, I pressed my block-arms to my face.

Oh God…

My stub-hands registered a face of edges and vertices. Even my glasses had taken on a rectangular profile.

As I screamed, a second scream shot out from behind me. The yell harmonized with mine, at the interval of a major third.

I whipped around to see what it was, and was instantly filled with conflict.

On the one hand—well, stub—I was still in the middle of my freak-out. On the other stub, Lass she was adorable.

She too was “doing the block”.

Andalon’s head-cube loomed large over her matchbox-shaped body. The square, sea-blue eyes were brightly blinking windows on her face-texture. Her mouth was a pinkish semicircle, opened wide with a smiling scream. Her hair and bangs were sheets and chains of sky-blue pixels. They moved with impressively realistic physics, as did the pixels of her pale gray nightgown.

I saw myself reflected in her eyes. My curly hair was just a flat, dark brown texture on the top of my cubic head. Scraggly wisps of beard and stubble dotted my face, and on either of my head’s two front edges. Meanwhile, my torso would have made for a decent sized box for shipping something through the mail.

Unable to contain myself, I shuddered and screamed one last time and then, clearing my throat, I closed my eyes, and took a deep, deep breath.

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True, I shouldn’t have been able to take a deep, deep breath, because my mouth and nose were just textures on the big block-head atop my shoulders, but…

“Don’t think about how weird it is,” I muttered, under my breath. “Don’t think about how weird it is…”

And then, as if on cue, it got even weirder: speech bubbles.

“Oh dear…”

A speech bubble popped up beside my head as I spoke, filling up with text that spelled out my words. It was like I was a character in one of the weekend funny papers. The bubble vanished a second after I finished speaking, disappearing as it had appeared: with a soft pop.

“Why are my words in speech bubbles?”

Another bubble popped into existence.

Keep in mind, while all this was going on, Andalon was basically screaming/squealing in excitement the whole way through. It wasn’t exactly conducive to me being. Also, for whatever reason, wordless screams didn’t qualify for speech bubbles.

Go figure.

Pop. Pop.

“Please stop screaming,” I said.

Andalon fell silent, though her smile remained wide as ever.

She started looking around. The shape of her mouth flickered back and forth between different states as she oohed and ahhed at the cube world all around her. Even her own body was a marvel to her.

Pop.

You get the idea.

Andalon gawked at her fingerless stub-hands. “Wowwwwwww…” Then she started hopping around.

“Holy fudge!” I cursed, staggering back.

Andalon’s jump had lifted her several feet in the air, bringing her up to my eye level.

She spread her arms at her sides. “Is that a good thing?”

“I…” I shook my head. “I…”

But my words trailed off.

I stood there for a moment, wondering where Greg was and what the heck was going on. Eventually, I mustered the courage to get moving. In times like these, all you could really do was get and keep moving and hope that things would start to make sense—hopefully sooner, rather than later. Andalon accompanied me happily, tracing out epicycles. One moment, she’d be circling around me, the next, she’d dash over to an oddity that had caught her fancy, and then dart back over to me after maybe a minute and then effervesce about what she’d seen: a tree, a fallen apple, a pineapple bush, a blocky approximation of a milking cow.

It was as chaotic as it was endearing.

As we passed by a big grove of golden-apple trees, I considered trying to punch one, if only to see what would happen. But I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

“Ooh! Look, Mr. Genneth!”

Andalon pointed to a golden apple that had fallen to the ground. Its glowing edges shot off tiny spurts of pixelated particle effects. Seeing her reach for it with her blocky arm, I rushed forward to place my stub-hand on her shoulder.

“It… looks suspicious, Andalon. Let’s wait until we learn more before we start eating things off the ground willy-nilly.”

Never take gold if you’re not certain it’s yours.

She turned to me and nodded. “Okay!” She blinked. Cutely.

Meandering across the plain, we gradually approached a range of craggy cliffs that towered over the forest’s blocky green canopy. The cliffs’ cubes had been arranged to give the impression of the wind’s art. The faux erosion—slender needles, sighing arches, ponderous globes clawed at the gray cookie-cutter clouds that passed overhead.

Andalon asked me about each and every one: rabbit, fish, bat, octopus, and many more. As I answered her question, I noticed that there wasn’t any sign of the Sun.

Suddenly, Andalon erupted in excitement. “WHAT?! IS?! THAT?!” She jumped up and down as she screamed.

I turned to look.

“Aha!” A voice boomed. “There you are!” The speech bubbles bounced off the blocky tors.

Without any warning, a great big monochromatic thing pitter-pattered out from around one of the stony needles, making me stagger back in shock, landing on my cubic derrière. I could feel the “grass” on the block beneath me poking through my pants-textured legs.

The creature was big—maybe three or four trees long. Its body was a flexible tube of giant cubes. It crawled toward us on several bunches of accordion legs.

Angel…

It was a giant caterpillar—and a two-toned one at that—and fuzzy, all around. Its upper half was all white; its lower, all black. The two halves contrasted sharply against the cliffs’ reds and orange-browns. But, what really spooked me—other than it being huge— was its head. I just couldn’t take my eyes off it.

It had the head of a panda bear. A panda.

The panda-headed giant caterpillar crawled onto the grassy plain, toward us. And then—wouldn’t you know it!—it opened its mouth and spoke.

“Beast's teeth,” it said. “That’s adorable. You even have your bow-tie.”

He was right, I did. It was painted on my chest—red pixels on yellow on white.

Rising to my feet, I leaned back, my square mouth opened wide. “Greg? The IT guy?”

“Who else would I be?” the creature—Greg—replied.

Where to start…?

“Wha…” I stood dusted off my legs, sending up plumes of pixelated schmutz. “Why do I look like this? And you,” I pointed at him, “why are you a—”

“—Caterpanda,” he said. “I’m calling this form a caterpanda.” Greg flicked his square ears. “Pandapillar doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well.”

The caterpanda craned his upper half over to Andalon. “Who’s this?” he asked.

She hopped up and down. “&alon!” she said. “&alon! &alon! &alon! &a—”

“Okay, hold up.” Greg furrowed his beary brow. “She’s saying ‘Andalon’, but she’s using an ampersand? What the hell?”

Andalon tilted her head to the side. “What’s a andpersand?” she asked.

I was about to open my mouth, but then an idea popped into my head. Concentrating, I focused on picturing an ampersand in my mind and then said the word “and”.

A speech bubble popped into being: “&”.

I pumped my arms in victory. “Yes!” The text of my shout appeared below the ampersand.

“That squiggly thing,” I said, pointing at the character. “That’s an ampersand.”

Andalon nodded. “Okay.”

“Andalon,” I asked, “why are you thinking of an ampersand?”

But then, she pointed at my speech bubble, her brow furrowed. “No no no no,” she said. “That’s not right. That’s not right!” She jammed her arms down in umbrage.

“What’s not right?” Greg asked.

“Andalon isn’t &alon. It’s &alon, not Andalon.”

Greg crossed his uppermost pair of legs. “And this matters because…?”

“It’s really ‘porptant!” Andalon said, leaping in place.

Or was it &alon? Ampersandalon?

“Not gonna lie,” Greg said, shaking his head, “this is kinda freaking me out. And when I say that, I’m saying it as a caterpanda.”

A thought occurred to me as I scratched my head; how I did that without fingers (let alone fingernails), I had no idea. The same thought must have occurred to Andalon, too, because we looked each other in the eyes at the same time.

“It’s the big Andalon!” I said. “The greater Andalon. It has to be.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes!”

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Greg scratched his head. “I don’t like being out of the loop!” He turned to stare at her again, and then glanced back at me, and then back at her, and then back at me. He brought his muzzle to my eye-level. “Seriously, who is she? Where did you find her? And why does she seem so…” he narrowed his eyes at her “…familiar?”

I stammered, trying to figure out what, if anything, to say to explain her, but then Andalon went ahead and did it for me.

“Andalon makes people wyrmy!” she said, spreading her arms out. “I makes wyrmeh, and the wyrmehs save people. And Mr. Genneth is gonna help, and we’re gonna beat the darkness, and we’ll all be safe, and no one will be scary or lonely or sad anymore.”

Greg’s eyes tightened in scrutiny.

“Did that little waif just say she’s the reason folks are turning into wyrms?”

I tried taking evasive action, but all I managed to do was tilt my head this way and that while I looked around in a hapless effort to stall for time.

Eventually, I just gave up.

“Yes,” I sighed, letting my box-shaped head tilt forward dejectedly, “yes, she did.”

There was a long silence, during which a circus’ worth of expressions manifested on the geometry of Greg’s face. I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

And, then, at last, the caterpanda spoke. It was barely above a whisper.

“That’s fuckin’ awesome.”