Chapter 11: Server Reset - A Dream of Waking Life

He felt the cold floor’s icy bite first, and then he gasped violently for breath. He gripped his chest, probing frantically for the braided cord, but there was no cord or pulsing energy.

“You okay, Loki?” Mu’s concern perfectly contrasted the uncaring attitude of the other three stretching silently in the single light of the grimly familiar cell.

I’m back here, Matt realized with frustrated horror. Not just this dream, but all this madness. I’m back in it. I thought I got out somehow. I thought...

Mu just smiled at him, waiting pleasantly for a response. Still on his back, he crawled away from her and tried to process what had occurred at the moment of orgasmic climax with May.

I went somewhere else. The cord. There was a cord coming out of my chest.

He stopped and gripped at his chest again. No. I couldn’t see my body. But I could feel the cord. And the lights. And May...her voice…

Mu took a soft step toward him, forcing Matt to throw up his hands.

“Stay back,” he told her, total confusion welling inside him. “None of this is real!”

Mu halted her approach and Matt could see that she was consciously stopping herself from reaching out a hand to help him. The others just shook their heads and laughed at him disappointedly.

Matt took in the whole of Mu’s naked form, and his mind was infused with May’s moans of ecstasy. He wanted to go back there. He needed her. It was the only thing that made sense or had ever made sense or ever would make sense.

She is all that matters.

It’s all a dream, came the old man. This world. May’s world. And that world of RGB lights you went to – that too. It’s all just a dream, Matthew.

Matt groaned maniacally and rolled his head.

“Fuck you!” he shouted, slamming his fist against the steel floor as he seethed and gritted his teeth against the intense, emanating pain.

“How the fuck can that hurt so much?” Matt vehemently demanded from the others. “It’s all just fucking code!” he screamed frantically. “I fucking programmed you! I programmed my own fucking hands and the fucking pain – even the particles of fucking light in this piece of shit cell!”

A dream, the old man whispered like a javelin piercing Matt’s tirade.

“You’re a dream!” Matt shouted aloud to his mind. “Fuck you!”

He was tired. Of everything. He wanted something to make sense, and for a short while, that something was May. But as he recollected May through Mu – her petite breasts and slanted smile and sharp chin and every inch of her skin – he could feel the truth: she had to be a dream. Not because the old man said so, but because it was too perfect. All Matt wanted was May, and now he had her in the real world. It was just too good to be true.

Because it’s not the real world. It’s a dream come true, but it’s all still a fucking dream, Matt forced himself to accept.

He remembered the distinct feeling that he would never see the others again, including May.

Is that because she isn’t real? Is that because...I woke up?

The alarm blared, but Matt didn’t move into position with the others.

Mu seemed to wrestle within herself as she patiently observed Matt’s outburst. Though her brows furrowed, she still offered him her cherry-lipped smile. She outstretched her hand to him, like a single buoy a thousand miles from shore. Matt shook his head and huddled further into the corner.

So maybe I didn’t wake up, Matt reasoned, returning to his thoughts. I’m back in this fucking dream. So what was that other place I went to then? What was that cord?

He felt his chest again, rubbing his solar plexus. The feeling was totally gone.

He pictured May again, and with a flare of longing, he recollected the feeling of being inside her.

May, Matt sobbed. You showed me something. Did you help me wake up? Was that really your voice I heard in that other place?

What you experienced was just another layer of the dream, the old man explained stolidly. May is a dream character. And so are you.

“No!” Matt shouted aloud at his mind, and he inwardly caught a glimpse of the light that had filled the world during his climax with May. The light seemed to scare the old man into submission. Matt was also reminded that he had a mission here. He had made substantial changes.

“I’ll find out once and for all what’s real,” Matt whispered beneath his breath.

“What?” Mu said, still centering her attention on Matt.

The alarm blared, but Matt knew there was nothing to fear.

“The Reaper is dead,” Matt told them, not caring whether they believed him or not. “And look,” Matt said, kicking the lower half of the back wall. The wall opened to reveal the God Weapons and God Armor that could normally only be accessed by unlocking the Golden God Door.

The door to the cell slid open, but the other players were frozen in confusion.

“But how?” Kartikeya inquired first.

“Who cares!” Igwe snapped. “Who cares!” he repeated, bellowing with murderous excitement. “Loki has his tricks. Let’s just win!”

The others nodded in simple agreement, satisfied with confusion as long as it brought them closer to victory. They began searching for their respective weapons and armor. Fighting the Reaper with the God Gear would be an even battle in a one-on-one match.

But if this worked, Matt reasoned, marveling at the literally sparkling equipment while he simultaneously pictured the Reaper’s twirling blades, then the other changes I made worked too. The Reaper is erased. I wanted to lock out all other users, but Souvik interrupted me before I could make the finishing touches. Still, there should only be a handful of other people able to access the game.

Matt shook his head at the thought of other real people being in his dream. But the logs, Matt remembered.

That might just be a dream, Matt reminded himself cruelly, speaking for the old man in his apparent absence. His mind was flooded with images of May rocking back and forth above him, grinding hard against him as her eyes glistened with pleasure.

Fine, Matt confirmed to himself. It all might be a dream. Everything might be a dream. I don’t fucking know anymore. But I can’t think that way. For May’s sake. I have to believe she’s real.

His eyes turned to Mu. She found her respective item first, and he watched as she garbed herself in a sparkling robe of gold and crimson. The robe tightened around her slender body on its own accord as intricate black eyeliner filigreed at the outside corners of her eyes, extending to her cheeks and temples and continuing into her hairline.

“Yes!” Mu practically moaned, and she sounded identical to May in ecstasy. Curved kunai seemed to be growing from between her fingers. Mu parted her lips and exhaled with sultry delight. Her tongue danced across her lips with an insatiable hunger for rapturous movement and murder.

She looks devilish, Matt thought in horror. Any selflessness she had in her is just rabid lust now.

A shockwave of thunder pinned Matt to the ground, but the others didn’t seem to take any notice. He cocked his head and saw that the sound was coming from Igwe. He wore oversized pearl-white gauntlets that boiled the air around them with visible tendrils of lightning bolts. His already oversized grin swelled as he slammed the gauntlets into one another once more, shotgunning Matt with more forceful energy that seemed to have no effect on the others. Blood-red war paint lined Igwe's face in a simple geometric pattern while pear-white armor grew over his body like living flesh.

Putch appeared frozen and just as solid as the gargantuan tapering stone slab she rested her hands on. The stone grew over her hands and arms and continued to shell every inch of her skin with impenetrable armor. As stone stretched to coat her body, what was once a uniform slab took on the shape of a giant club. She appeared more like an earth-elemental creature than an actual person.

A moan of pleasure turned Matt’s attention back to Mu. She was pressing the tip of one of her kunai into the exposed part of her left breast.

“May!” Matt screamed, rising to his feet at the sight of a small bead of blood dripping down Mu’s cleavage. She opened her eyes slowly and bit her lip at the sight of him, looking as though she might pounce on him and have him for herself as the others watched.

“I want to feel life drain from someone’s body,” Mu purred, then she backflipped and corkscrewed in the air with perfect ease, leaving the cell in a flash to hunt down anything and everything she could find.

She’s like the Reaper, Matt nodded to himself with terrible understanding. That’s not May. It’s not even Mu. It’s...just code. Just a game.

Just a dream, the old man said from somewhere incredibly distant. The light from May was still suppressing the old man’s voice somehow. I’m going to find out the truth, Matt repeated to himself with newfound resolve. I just have to get to the office and the laptop before the dream ends. Then I’ll know.

With an animalistic roar, Igwe charged out of the cell, and the fully rock-armored Putch followed, each of her steps like an earthquake tremoring through the very structure of the dream itself.

Kartikeya wore an easy grin and winked at Matt as he lifted a golden spear carved with intricate, fractaling patterns. The spear was multiple times the length of his body and too large to hold upright in the cell, so Kartikeya allowed the majority of its length to stretch numerous feet outside to the battlefield. He pivoted to face the door, and the peacock wings tattooed across his back began to stretch out of his shoulders and fill the cell with dizzyingly ornate feathers.

“Your job is done, Loki. I don’t know how you did it, but you did. We’ll take care of the rest. You just stay here,” Kartikeya said, his voice stolid and booming with a godly echo. With that, Kartikeya bent at the knees, then jumped out of the cell and into the air, his powerful wings rocketing him with a force that filled the small room with a hurricane gale, pinning Matt against the wall.

Who knows how long I have. Get up! Matt demanded of his body, and his legs unwound and rose easily as if in detached response to his direction.

There was only a single item left from the original pile, and it was meant for Loki.

A near-invisibility cloak, Matt reminded himself, remembering what he had learned from navigating the source code in the real world.

Yes! Matt said inwardly, assuring his mind and combating the old man simultaneously. The real world…with May. That’s the real world. And I’m going to prove it!

He wrapped the cloak around his shoulders and it came to life. Swimming shadows sprang from the material and blanketed the whole of his body. Any enemy onlooker would have to be keenly investigating his position in order to actually discern that he was there.

He peered outside the cell. He didn’t see anyone, but he could hear cries of horror mixed with shouts of savage excitement.

I might not have long, Matt reminded himself resolutely. Once my team kills all the others, that might reset the servers and my dream along with it.

Matt began sprinting in the direction of where they had found the entrance to his office the last time.

A flash of gold struck his vision suddenly, and he fell backward in shock as Mu, naked and defenseless, was impaled against a wall by Kartikeya’s inhumanly long spear.

“Take that!” Kartikeya shouted almost politely from at least twenty feet in the air. There was no savageness or lust for death in his voice – not in this form. There was just the insatiable drive for victory. His groin and torso were covered in illustrious feathers identical to those of his wings, which flapped regularly and easily to keep him in the air. Ebony hair floated freely above his head as if swayed by an unfelt breeze. As Kartikeya bared his teeth and removed his spear from between Mu’s ribs, his hair whipped itself in the same direction as his arms, seeming to afford him some kind of supernatural strength.

“Having fun, Loki?” Kartikeya inquired pleasantly. Without waiting for an answer, he ascended back into the thick shadows above, readying himself to divebomb another unsuspecting victim from invisible heights like an owl hunting for starved field mice.

Mu, Matt almost screamed before realizing it wasn’t his Mu. This Mu had various small neon tattoos imprinted on her, along with numerous facial piercings and a single pink streak of hair on one side. One of the tattoos imprinted across her right thigh said Congo-Rayo.

Wait…isn’t that the company I partnered with? Matt realized.

This other Mu bled profusely from her wound, and as life drained from her body, Matt noticed the other tattoos:

Cosmos Coffee. Pear Enterprises. Monty’s. Freemart.

They all sound like companies, Matt gawked grimly. Sponsorships maybe? From…the real world. This is fucking real!

A wave of nausea stampeded his insides, and Matt had to force himself away from the now motionless Mu player.

This is a video game in the real world. I’m in a real video game right now!

The old man’s uproarious laughter echoed through the furthest reaches of Matt’s mind.

Listen to yourself, the old man demanded pityingly. What makes more sense? That you psychically connected to a video game or that this is all just my dream?

Neither, Matt told him in equal horror and self-pity. Neither option makes any fucking sense.

From where I’m lying, one of those options makes perfect sense. You’ll feel it when you wake up and return to your senses...when you become me again, the old man explained with a twinge of sadness. What is this going to prove anyway? How can you ever truly prove the unreality of my reality or the reality of your unreality?

You’ll see, Matt told him simply, and he realized with greater horror that the old man could be heard in both the video game and the real world.

Which…is the same world, Matt grappled inwardly to accept. On the other hand, when he thought back to his memories of waking as the old man, he remembered that the old man couldn’t hear him.

Because you're a dream, the old man told him as if in response to his realization.

“Shut up!” Matt barked, and he visually beckoned May’s light to silence the old man back into slumber. It seemed to work, but the old man’s point remained steadfast in Matt’s mind.

Go! Matt urged himself with existential reluctance. Just get to the office!

He turned a corner, uncertain precisely where to find the circular hole in the ground. A naked version of himself covered in company logos turned a corner and sprinted frantically past him, turning another corner as if changing his mind at the last minute.

Matt felt a pang of dissociation seeing the different version of himself run past, but he didn’t allow his mind to slow him down this time. Just go! he demanded, holding on to May’s light with all his mind.

He could almost see the light as he sprinted forward, certain the hole in the floor had to be close.

“Where’d he go?” a deep feminine voice lashed with wickedness. Matt turned and saw his Mu smiling with venomous satisfaction, her armor and skin a glistening spray of someone else’s blood. Every bit of revealed skin not covered in a thick layer of fluid was imprinted by intricate black lines extending all the way from the corners of her eyes.

Matt shook his head, terrified of the malevolent predator demanding her bloody sacrifice.

Matt pointed haphazardly in a random direction, just wanting to make it to the room before the dream’s end. He realized with dread that he accidentally pointed in the direction the other version of himself had actually been running.

“Thank you, sweetie,” Mu winked devilishly, and she darted around a corner, leaving behind a crimson haze.

Hurry! Matt urged himself.

He isn't real, anyway, came the subdued voice of the old man. None of this is real.

Matt gritted his teeth and ignored the old man. He could feel time running out. Searching frantically for the hole in the floor, he felt totally lost among the high walls of the zigzagging streets. Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye – an unsuspecting solid gold circle inlaid almost randomly in the floor.

That’s it, Matt knew somehow. That’s my office.

He got on his knees and tried to find some way to pry out what amounted to a solid gold manhole cover, but it was perfectly flush with the ground. He stomped hard on it, but it felt even more solid than the normal steel ground.

“Damn it!” Matt cried, and he closed his eyes and scraped his fingers through his hair with desperate fingertips and knuckles. “Let me in!” he demanded of his mind. “Let me in!” he screamed again at the top of his lungs.

Opening his eyes, Matt found himself standing in front of a small pool of water filled with koi swimming frantically. Fresh green plant life grew from and surrounded the pool with dense, overhanging fronds. He jumped back in surprise, half-expecting the scene to change again, but everything remained in place. He looked up to find the golden circle inlaid in the ceiling of his office.

I got in! I...teleported on command, Matt thought excitedly. Achieving powers like flight or teleportation was part of the natural process of gaining greater and greater lucidity. First, one had to become aware of the dream, then, with practice, they could begin exacting control of their mind with increasing degrees of creativity and freedom.

Am I becoming fully lucid in this dream? Matt pondered, looking at his hands as an instinctual reality check. But I thought…he gasped, I thought this was real.

It’s a dream, the old man corrected with a subtle whisper.

You’re the dream! Matt volleyed desperately. You have to be. And if I can become lucid here, then I can become lucid in your world too.

He turned toward his desk and nearly fell over again in shock. May, not Mu, sat in lotus posture, eyes fully open and unblinking. She was surrounded by freely bobbing fronds and fluttering butterflies of varied hues. She took no notice of him and appeared to be staring at the laptop on his desk.

“May!” Matt gasped, wanting to take her in his arms. But she was unnaturally frozen as if by a spell.

Focus! Matt reminded himself. For her sake. Ignore that dream illusion and focus!

His lips were dry and cracked, and he felt incredibly thirsty from the nonstop rush of adrenaline. He felt increasingly heavy and sleepy as if the old man’s age had suddenly caught up with him in this dream.

Not now! Matt demanded, jolting himself back to wakefulness.

He glanced once more at May. She looked exactly the same as when Matt had first stumbled back into her life...and his own.

“May,” Matt checked once more, but her enchanting eyes didn’t move with him, nor did her seductive lips part to speak.

Matt opened the laptop and was prompted with the familiar question: Are you awake?

He typed: imstuckinadreamwithinadream. The interface opened to an old school DOS prompt with a single flashing cursor.

What should I write? Matt thought, unsure how to access the source code of his own mind and the old man’s world.

He typed: <pathsearch> dir

The cursor flashed a few beats, then displayed a single directory file: source.

Too easy, Matt thought grimly, and he glanced back at May. Though her beauty undulated through the room, she remained a perfect statue staring at the laptop.

“May,” Matt checked, but not even the butterflies seemed to take notice of him.

He typed: open /source

An endless cascade of code streamed across the interface with exponentially increasing rapidity. Each character shifted dynamically with each additional line so that the code was never precisely the same from one moment to the next. To most people, the streaming symbols would look like nothing more than gibberish – maybe even a concerning error. But for Matt, it was something much worse. It wasn’t the source code of the video game world or the old man’s world. It was the source code for his own world – for what he desperately hoped was the real world.

His chest tightened and his hands gripped the edges of the desk as his body’s internal drive for survival tried desperately to break his mind away from what he saw.

“No!” Matt shrieked. Sinking into the oversized chair, he still couldn’t loosen his grip from the desk. It felt as if he might fall forever into an invisible void.

“May…” Matt groaned through gritted teeth and freely flowing tears. As he continued sinking slowly into the chair, paralyzed by this new layer of insanity, he watched as the laptop’s interface aligned with May’s unflinching face, displaying every detail of her form and her mind and her very essence with perfect precision.

“Is it so surprising?” May said sweetly, moving naturally all of a sudden as if she had never actually been frozen.

All is lost, Matt told himself, his wide eyes glazed with horror. The source code...it’s the code to the real world, not the old man’s world. That means I can...I can rewrite the real world from this laptop. He gazed dreadfully at May and the identical code streaming alongside her. I can even rewrite May. She’s just code. It’s all just code. It’s all –

Just a dream, came the old man, but rather than pity, he sounded filled with remorse.

May blinked, and the butterflies fluttered away at the behest of her expanding smile. She untangled her legs and rose in a single movement, then she took a frond gently in her hand and breathed in its scent.

“It’s so real,” she marveled. “Just like the ‘real’ world,” May said, casually making quotation marks with her fingers around the word real. “But is it so surprising, Matt?”

Matt felt transfixed.

“Why are you here?” Matt pleaded. “Why is any of this happening?”

“You have to know for sure, Matt,” May said bittersweetly. “Just as you made changes to this dream, you have to try out some changes in the other dream too.”

“The real world, you mean,” Matt pressed, but May didn’t let up.

“A dream,” May and the old man corrected Matt in unison as voices both inside and outside his head.

“No!” Matt demanded, pushing himself and the chair away from the desk.

“This is all in my head! This is just –”

May interrupted him with pursed lips and narrowed eyelids. She strode to him and glided the back of her hand over the overworked veins in his temples.

“You have to know for sure, my love,” she explained gently. Then she nodded at the laptop and said, “Go ahead. Nothing substantial. You don’t want to erase me, now do you?” she furrowed seriously at the idea of being erased from the very source code of reality itself.

She’s right, Matt admitted pitifully, taking in the whole of May for just another sorrowfully sweet moment. I have to know for sure.

He raised his fingers and placed them one-by-one into position.

“Something small,” May repeated again, and she kissed Matt atop his head multiple times, lingering lovingly with each placement of her grazing lips.

Something small, Matt repeated to himself, and as his mind considered potential changes, he watched in helpless dread as the code reformed and reconfigured itself to match the intent of his mind.

He imagined May with shorter hair, and then the May in front of him had shorter hair. He imagined her with purple eyes and then watched as her chestnut-brown eyes transformed, taking on a deep-violet sheen.

“No!” Matt demanded desperately, and the code constituting May reverted alongside the physical May. “I don’t want to change you!” Matt told her.

“Then change something else,” she said simply, squeezing his shoulder with her gentle grip.

A mammoth weight slammed against the ceiling, causing both May and Matt to jump in surprise.

“Hurry,” she told him despite total calm in her tone.

Matt held his eyes shut and focused on the changes he would make.

Couldn’t I just change myself so that I’m sane? Can’t I just rewrite my own mind from here? Matt considered, but nowhere in the streaming code could he find anything pertaining to himself outside of what amounted to placeholder text as if he had been planned into the world but never fully fleshed out. I’m like a body out of space and time. It’s like I’m some unnatural part of the world. It’s like I don't really...or fully...exist.

Questioning the validity of his own state of being so directly reminded him of Dr. Heron and the Serotel.

That’s it. That’s the change I’ll make. Three Serotel bottles. One containing seven pills. One containing two pills. Another containing no pills. All three bottles will be in the bottom drawer of Dr. Heron’s filing cabinet. And when I wake up, I’ll be in his office. And…

Matt gazed at May, trying to come up with something about her past, but his mind was still empty of her existence.

“Tell me something that would be impossible for me to know,” he said as she slowly kissed his temple.

May considered it a moment, then said, “When I was eleven, I lost my favorite toy when my family and I went camping. It was a little gray cat. It looked like this.” She held out her hand and offered him a small gray plastic cat no larger than her thumb. “I called her Katsy. I cried for three days after I lost her.” She emptied Katsy into Matt’s open palm, and he placed it in his pocket. He eyed the code and willed a final change.

“When I wake up to the real world,” Matt told her, “if this works, then I’ll have the toy cat in my pocket. I’ll give it to you, and you’ll know I’m not crazy. You’ll know that...the whole world is crazy, not me.”

May nodded. “I hope so, Matt.”

Another colossal slam to the ceiling ejected the circular golden doorway into the room with the velocity of a bullet, leaving it half-embedded in the crimson floor of the office. Matt and May jumped back in startled surprise, then looked up to see Igwe peering into the room, his fists boiling the air with electric bolts of monstrous power.

“What in the fuck are you doing down there, Loki? And...is that Mu? Xiwangmu, that you?”

“So you can see her?” Matt shouted at Igwe. Igwe shrugged and nodded, then waved a gauntlet at Matt with sudden realization.

“You’re still playing games, Loki? We’re about to win! You two should get up here. There’s only a few stragglers left.”

A ground-splitting shockwave pummeled the far corner of the ceiling, and Igwe grinned with excited brutality.

“Oh, never mind!” Igwe said, unable to keep himself from battle. He pushed up off the ground at least ten feet into the air before diving fist-first toward his prey.

“He could see you,” Matt confirmed to May, unsure what to make of it. “You’re not just a hallucination then,” Matt hoped painfully.

“Or it’s all a hallucination,” May and the old man reminded Matt in unison.

“Will I be locked forever in these endless layers of madness – these endless Matryoshka coffins of insanity?” he asked May and the old man at once. He sank back into the chair, energy evaporating rapidly from his body now that he had completed what he came to do.

“Maybe,” May and the old man answered as one.

Maybe, Matt repeated dreadfully, his voice like rabid violence in his mind.

“Maybe there’s a source code for the old man’s world in that other place I woke up when we had...I mean…when we made love,” he hoped, not caring that he was conversing with this dream character as if she were the real May.

“Maybe,” May repeated simply. Then she smiled sweeter than ever and asked, “Are you dreaming?”

“I don’t know!” Matt nearly yelped. “I don’t know what the fuck’s happening, May. You...you’re part of this dream. And you’re part of the...the real world. And you’re in that other world. I heard your voice. And you must be in the old man’s world too. It’s always you, May. You’re always there. You’re always –”

“Are you awake?” she repeated smoothly, undaunted by Matt’s panic.

“I don’t know!” Matt screamed with abandon this time.

May appeared unphased. She just smiled wide with seemingly perfect understanding of Matt’s predicament and knelt down to align her ravishing eyes with his.

“Exactly,” May said, her presence like an impenetrable fog capturing Matt’s attention. “You don’t know. You can’t ever know. No one can. That’s why I had to leave. You know that, Matt. You just couldn’t accept the truth.”

“I got him!” Kartikeya screamed from above. “We won! Holy hell, we did it!”

The room began vibrating, and a soft rumble could be heard in the distance.

“The truth!” Matt pleaded with her, uncertain where she was going with this or if it was just meaningless dreamtalk. But as always, everything seemed perfectly real.

“What’s the truth, May?” Matt pressed as the vibrating continued.

The server’s going to reset, Matt realized. We’re almost out of time.

The others were cheering maniacally, even roaring with blood-fueled ecstasy. The rumbling intensified, and the room’s subtle vibrations turned into visible shaking.

“Tell me, May. Please,” Matt begged.

May wrapped her arms around him and brought her lips a breath away from his left ear. She whispered something, but Matt couldn’t hear her over the now thunderous rumbling.

“May!” Matt shouted frantically. “Tell me, please!”

He could feel her breath against the tip of his ear, and though it sent waves of pleasure up and down his spine, it offered nothing in terms of actual meaning. The rumbling was so loud that he couldn’t even hear his own voice. He slid off the chair and instinctually crawled beneath the desk as if the tremors constituted a transient earthquake. He pulled May close, and they braced themselves against the now torrenting ripples undulating through their bodies and the room as if everything, including themselves, constituted a single homogeneous fluid.

He screamed her name once more, but it was no use. She clung to him as if she really would never let go, and he held her just as tightly, never wanting to lose her again.

All of a sudden, they were tossed like unstrapped freight against the far wall, and Matt couldn’t help screaming in abject horror, though his voice was drowned out by the tumultuous rumbling of reality and the barbaric shouts of victory from the others.

They slammed hard against the opposite wall, and the very fabric of reality began pulling apart, splitting spacetime from endlessly fractaling seams like gaping scar tissue. There was a void-darkness hiding behind it all, and the tearing of reality forced the very atoms of Matt’s body into painful separation.