Chapter 21: The Tower of God - A Dream of Waking Life

The world was awash in endless white – perfect void white spanning forever.

Matt twisted his head, bringing his eyes level with the ground. He saw and felt manicured grass, and he realized that the endless white was just the sky above. And in the distance, between the all-white sky and grassy earth, the blizzard raged. He was outside of it somehow, seeing the blizzard now as an all-pervading wall of torrenting madness. For Matt, brightness and relative calm replaced the blizzard’s shadowy, howling chaos.

But the air outside the blizzard was still arctic cold. A stabbing squall forced him to grit his teeth and even threatened his body with hypothermia, but it passed and left him panting, trying to catch his breath.

Unlike the last time Matt had woken to this icy hell that Heron believed to be the real world, his skin was no longer crystallizing.

May! Matt’s mind interjected against all else. Is she just an act? Or worse, is her very identity just a figment of my imagination? The dread of loving a mere illusion with every ounce of his being struck through him. Is all this love I feel just a machination of my mind? Am I…is she…

Matt shivered and contracted his old, decrepit body in a desperate plea for warmth. As he tightened his muscles, the cold world became more tolerable and a slight warmth lapped at his limbs. He realized then that he was wrapped in layers of some animal’s thick fur. He further tightened the fur around his body and shivered, his teeth chattering against the frequent but random gusts and gales of below-zero temperatures.

But it was still better than dying in the crystallizing blizzard.

“He’s back,” Matt heard Fernanda say from somewhere unseen.

“Is he?” Souvik checked.

“Can’t you hear his teeth chattering away?”

Souvik laughed. “Mind is a complex creature. He instinctively grew those furs to warm himself, but he still can’t go all the way and just be warm.”

Fernanda huffed in agreement. “It is quite interesting, indeed. Mind is capable of infinity, and infinitely capable of handicapping itself in an infinite diversity of ways.”

“I guess finding ways to limit and transform himself is just another aspect of infinity though, right?” Souvik considered.

These people, Matt thought grimly. According to Heron, they’re just constructs of my mind. Yet here they are, contemplating the nature of my reality…their own reality… despite not being real.

Matt didn’t hear Fernanda offer an opinion, but he envisioned her nodding in agreement at Souvik’s point.

“Hey,” Fernanda goaded Matt, “why don’t you try helping us here?”

Matt just stared at the sky and the blizzard and the grass. He didn’t want to go any further. He didn’t want to suffer through insanity a moment longer.

Why? he wondered simply. Why is all this happening?

“It's the procedure,” Souvik explained simply, clearly able to hear Matt’s thoughts. “That’s why you forgot about this place.”

“I mean everything!” Matt snapped, jolting his body upright. “Not just my goddamn forgetting of the past. Everything! Why is all this happening?”

Fernanda and Souvik knelt over a pile of twigs and kindling. They appeared to be attempting to light a fire. A gust pushed at his body, and Matt nearly fell back onto the grass.

“And are you reading my mind?” Matt accused.

“Well, of course,” Fernanda shrugged.

“Well!” Matt seethed. “Don’t!”

He turned to catch the pair shrugging.

“Fine,” Fernanda agreed simply. “Now, your subconscious mind gave you furs and supplied us with this wood, but it didn’t do the rest of the work. Why don’t you try lighting the fire?” Fernanda issued. “It’s for your own good, not ours.”

Souvik turned at the neck to look at something behind Matt. Matt turned to follow and fell back with vertigo as the infinitely tall tower unfurled into the endless white above. They were a few hundred feet from its lustrous obsidian-black base. Matt marveled at its eldritch size and estimated that it must be at least a mile in diameter. The blizzard wall curved with the tower’s base, extending around the edges to reveal that Matt and the tower were in the eye of the impenetrable blizzard raging on all sides.

“The other me. He built that thing?” Matt gasped.

“You and him both,” Fernanda explained. “You’re the same, Matt. You built the Tower of God as much as he did.”

Matt tried to remember being a god in this tower, but he was still like an outsider to his own existence.

A gale pummeled Matt, slamming his frail body against the ground and knocking the wind out of his aching lungs.

“Try lighting the fire,” Fernanda suggested again, not moving to help him.

This is my world, Matt told himself. Just accept it. Please! he begged his mind. He thought back to what he remembered about lucid dreaming. Somehow he could remember that at least.

Become the fire, he told himself. Gripping the icy grass blades, he pivoted and glared at the small teepee of sticks and kindling. Ignite! he demanded. Burn! he roared within, pleading with the world to abate its terrible cold. His skin began prickling, and he felt the pins and needles of warmth against his cold-rotten, age-bittered flesh. Fire! Matt demanded, and he felt his body ignite with warmth at the same instant the kindling combusted. A small flame gluttonously licked at the tips of the sticks, eager to be fed.

It worked! Matt thought with glee, forgetting for just a moment the insanity of his very existence.

Fernanda and Souvik smiled and nodded.

“You’ll remember everything in time,” Fernanda assured him.

He watched them add sticks and larger branches from a pile gathered near the fire. His smile soured as the obvious dawned on him.

Lighting the fire. Manifesting furs to cover my body. This so-called real world is just a dream. Like everything. And everyone.

“What’s wrong?” Souvik asked him, seeing his frown and apparently obeying the order to not read his mind.

“It’s all just a dream,” Matt told him forlornly.

Souvik shrugged away the weight of existence with a wave of his arms. “Dreams. Reality. Existence. Being. Suchness – none of that has any real meaning, Matt. Not here, at least.”

Fernanda exhaled a great sigh, like a bellow from the anguished Earth itself.

Matt turned back to the tower, not ready to explore the ontological nature of his existence with a personified part of himself.

“What will happen up there?” Matt asked, inching closer to the fire.

Fernanda shrugged. “Been a long time since we were here. Last time was the first time. The ‘you’ up there conjured us into existence, and then the ‘you’ down here stepped out of your own body, copying yourself into…well…you. Then you accompanied us to the labs,” Fernanda explained with some difficulty. “You…are him,” she continued, choosing her words carefully. “The man we brought to the labs, or rather, the man who brought us with him to the labs…there is no difference between him and the man in the tower – not in mind nor memories. You are you. You are him. You just don’t remember.”

Matt shivered and bundled the furs closer to his core.

“So he…I…all this…all this is my doing?” Matt craned his head around, referring to the world.

“And we’re your creation too,” Souvik reminded him.

“But you two must be real somewhere,” Matt urged, thinking back to the real Souvik and Fernanda.

Or maybe the unreal, Matt considered grimly.

“You can’t just be random forms I conjured at some point. You must be based on real people who…who matter to me!”

The pair just shrugged.

“Maybe,” Fernanda offered. “You didn’t explain our existence. You gave us a job. That’s all. The job was to bring you to the labs and make sure Heron started the procedure and then bring you back to the tower if and when meaningful success occurred. We did our job, Matthew.”

Fernanda seemed to be looking for forgiveness or recognition of some sort, but Matt could offer no such thing. Not because he blamed her in some way. After all, Fernanda was a stranger to him in this world. But it horrified him that these people didn’t seem emotionally distressed by the ambiguous nature of their existence.

They’re like the video game characters. Like programs. Only they’re worse because they’re sentient and dynamic, yet they still have no drive to understand. To know. To come to terms with the nature of their reality.

Matt was alone, and he felt the fullness of his solitude like concrete crushing him from every side.

Everything here is either me or a creation of my mind. And everyone and everything in the world inside my mind is the same. Even May, Matt winced, still unable to fully accept that as a possibility. It’s all just a dream within a dream. Everyone and everything. And there’s no way out.

Matt turned and gazed helplessly at Fernanda and Souvik; they could offer no solace. They were just fractaling mysteries within endlessly fractaling mysteries.

I just want to run away, Matt lamented. I just want all this to be over.

If he could regain control, he could part the blizzard and simply go somewhere else in this world. Away from these people and this tower and everything. He eyed the blizzard wall and gazed into its dizzying, tumultuous patterns of life-sucking air currents.

There’s no way out. Not yet.

“What are we doing here,” Matt seethed, aware that, until he could recollect the whole of himself, he would remain at the whim of whatever came next in this maze of insanity.

“We’re waiting for the tower to open,” Fernanda explained as she added another branch to the insatiable flames.

A gale kicked hard at the branches, but Fernanda quickly reformed the embers and unburnt wood with her bare hands. She was totally unfazed by the fire, and it didn’t appear to burn her skin.

“Have you tried knocking?” Matt said, grimly half-jesting through gritted teeth.

Souvik shrugged and began walking toward the tower at Matt’s suggestion. Matt shivered and bundled the furs closer around himself.

“Try being young,” Fernanda advised again, forcing a surge of frustration into Matt that he still couldn’t do something apparently so rudimentary for these people.

He tried. Just like with the fire, he tried feeling young, but it was still no use. The wind tore at his skin, and he was forced to inch even closer to the fire that he now realized was utterly smokeless.

Fuck! Matt cursed.

As he huffed with anger at his own mind, he noticed in his vision’s periphery that icy webbing was encroaching onto the grass at the base of the blizzard wall like roots probing for nutrients.

It’s closing in on the tower, Matt realized, unsure of the implications.

Three dull clangs emanated from the tower, and Matt turned to see Souvik beating his gargantuan fist against it.

The probing veins of frost beckoned Matt’s attention back, hypnotizing him with undefinable urgency. This time, Fernanda noticed the subject of his gaze.

“The blizzard is slowly getting closer to the tower,” she explained in awe. “During the time it took to administer the billions of procedures you underwent, it came maybe an inch closer, but it’s still something. It’s still a change,” Fernanda marveled, letting her gaze fall on nothing in particular. “And now it’s really starting to move ever since you came out of the labs. You can almost see it crawling. Like it’s alive,” she breathed in profound awe. Then she pivoted her gaze to meet Matt’s eyes.

“Change,” she told him simply. “And it’s not something you’re actively doing. It’s your subconscious mind that’s making it happen. Your idea with the procedure might just be working.”

Matt found it difficult to follow her explanation, but one word stuck out beyond all others.

Change, Matt thought. Something beyond the powers of the one in the tower…I mean…my own powers? he wondered.

“Why doesn’t he just stop the blizzard? Or let it consume the tower. Or execute whatever change you’re talking about,” Matt asked.

“It’s part of your plan,” Fernanda said without further explanation. “And I admit it’s coming along. It…might even work, which just seems…remarkable to the point of hilarious in a way.”

Souvik returned and shrugged with defeat. “Nothing,” he said, referring to the tower.

“Hilarious?” Matt asked Fernanda.

“You’ve supposedly been looking for a way for…forever,” Fernanda marveled with a chuckle. “Maybe it’ll work after all.”

“What?” Matt urged. “What’s his plan…my plan…in all this fucking endless madness?”

A whole panel opened at the tower’s base, revealing a dark interior.

“Ask yourself,” Souvik offered before Fernanda could answer.

They stood and waited, clearly expecting Matt to walk along with them, or maybe even transport them if his powers really were limitless.

He tried to stand, but his legs gave out. The grass cushioned his fall better than the laboratory floor, but the slamming of his body against the ground still left him momentarily dazed.

I would have been dead from that fall if I were still as frail as I was back in the labs, Matt realized. He hoped that maybe he was slightly younger after all, but it still made no difference in terms of his ability to move himself.

Souvik and Fernanda lifted his frail body at the arms, then Fernanda pivoted and easily lifted Matt, cradling him like a newborn.

The tower loomed ahead, and with each of Fernanda’s steps, Matt felt the environment warm slightly. By the time they arrived at the tower’s base, Matt couldn’t help loosening the furs and letting them fall to the ground. The blizzard seemed so distant; not even the wind seemed disturbed.

Impenetrable darkness filled the inside of the tower. Standing only a few inches from it, they still weren’t able to see past the coal-black fog. Fernanda strode into the darkness without hesitation, but Matt couldn’t help holding his breath and squeezing his eyelids into slits in anticipation for what might be on the other side.

The darkness turned out to just be an illusion, as they stepped through it and into a simple foyer, no more than twenty feet high, consisting of sharp metallic walls tapering to a single door a dozen or so paces in front of them. The door was normal sized, but in front of the door stood an actual titan whose head almost reached the twenty-foot ceiling. The titan’s deep black skin perfectly contrasted his hulking pearl-white armor, and his mass made Matt feel like a lone ant in his presence. Even Fernanda and Souvik seemed like children in his midst.

“Chike,” Matt gawked, taking in the giant’s unmistakable features.

The giant gazed straight ahead, seeming not to even notice the tiny creatures below him.

“We come to speak to him,” Souvik explained, having to raise his voice slightly to ensure the giant could hear him with ears so close to the ceiling. “The task he gave us appears to be arriving at a point of success…finally.”

The Chike-like titan didn’t say a word. With a single pivot of his whale-dense leg, he moved aside, sending tremors through the tower with even his most subtle movements. Eyes like lighthouse beacons stared into Matt’s soul as Matt, Souvik, and Fernanda passed below the giant’s waist and approached the office door.

Chike! Matt thought as he stared into the stoic yet profoundly present eyes of the man who he remembered as his best friend. Are you just some hulking guard in a fantasy world, Chike? Or is all this just a grotesque version of reality?

“Chike!” Matt called out to the giant. He stared and the giant stared back. “Chike!” Matt called again, but the giant did not respond.

“He’s just part of the tower,” Souvik explained, and then he opened the door before Matt could protest. The door was identical to his office door from the world inside his mind. The inlaid gold MW symbol adorned the door’s mahogany, and as Souvik swung it open, flashing red, green, and blue light scintillated and reflected off the symbol’s surface.

They entered the room, and Matt went wide-eyed at the sight of an amorphous area of space about six feet from the ground that undulated with a heartbeat-like rhythm. At its center, a point of perfect darkness, no larger than Matt’s fist, churned and coalesced into itself while its periphery glowed and tendrilled with RGB-hued pure energy. Like a fissure in the fabric of reality itself, the energy flared outward, singeing the air near Matt. Still held by Fernanda, he shrank into her arms, feeling as though the reality fissure was both threatening and familiar somehow.

The world I went to when I made love to May, Matt thought, that’s what it reminds me of. That RGB glow…that’s also the place I went on DMT. I’m certain of it.

Then again, there was no way to be sure of anything. Like skirting the edges of a black hole’s event horizon, Matt felt as though the flickering fissure might pull at him and rip him to pieces. He knew there was no real death in this world, and yet, the undulating fissure still filled him with the fear of existential finality.

He forced his focus away from the fissure and inspected the rest of the room. Though there was no other light to illuminate his surroundings except the glow of the coursing energy, it was still more than obvious where he was. The plants and the koi fish and the gold, crimson, ochre decor and everything.

“It’s my office,” Matt gasped, “and May’s apartment. Down to every detail.”

Except for that surging energy thing, Matt noted with trepidation.

Fernanda deposited Matt onto the ground then took her place beside Souvik in the doorway.

Matt caught movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see two figures in a king-size bed against the wall opposite the amorphous energy. One of the figures was still sound asleep, but the other was lifting itself out of bed.

“Quiet!” the figure whispered, more plea than demand. “He doesn’t like to be woken up.”

Though the figure’s voice was unmistakable, as she walked out of the bed’s shadow and into the light, the sight of May stole Matt’s breath. It was May. His May. She was exactly as he remembered her from his dreams of waking life. Early 30s. Diamond piercings. Lustrous black hair down to her shoulders. A bright ochre gown of silk draped over her bare skin.

“May!” Matt shrieked, his skin aching to feel her. He could barely move from his place on the ground, but he still reached for her. Then he stopped at the sight of her backing away from him with a look of terror on her face. May cast a sorrowful, pitying glance over her shoulder at the figure still lying in bed.

“It’s me, May!” Matt urged, wanting desperately for her to run into his arms and tell him everything would be all right.

May shook her head and offered Matt the same despair-filled, pitying face. Then she winced as the figure in the bed groaned in belligerent anger. “Fuck!” the figure roared from his resting place. “May! Where are you!”

May ran to the man in bed and guided one of his arms around her waist. “It’ll be all right,” she told him in a whisper that could soothe even a god’s anger. May issued a soft chant, lulling the man back to sleep despite his series of indecipherable groans of protestation.

Is that the so-called Tower God? Matt wondered. Is that…me?

Souvik stepped back as if accepting that they would just have to wait an unknown amount of time for the man to wake up naturally. Fernanda, on the other hand, said in a subdued voice, “Sorry to interrupt you –”

The man interrupted her with a growl of exasperation. “Whaddya want?” he whined like an exhausted toddler.

May kissed the back of the man’s neck, and in response, the man pushed her away so hard that she fell off the bed.

“May!” Matt croaked from the ground.

“Shut up!” the man in bed screamed through Matt’s own voice. “All of you!”

That bastard, Matt seethed.

May lowered her head in shame, then returned to bed and allowed the man to wrap an arm around her torso and pull her tightly against his belly.

“Wake up!” Matt barked, barely able to hold his body high enough to see the pair in bed. “I said wake up!” Matt practically growled.

I’ll kill him for hurting May. I don’t care if he is me.

“I was deep in the dream,” the Tower God seethed in a rumble that seemed to vibrate the very walls of his tower. “I was living in paradise with my love, and you come here and set fire to my Eden?” he asked with a threatening and barely controlled edge to his voice.

Souvik took a step back, and this time so did Fernanda.

“Please,” Souvik pleaded, “we do only as you ask. The labs, they –”

The man in bed screamed with ghastly rage as he lifted himself into a seated position in the bed. “Get away!” he screamed with terrible cruelty, tensing his unclothed upper body with murderous rage.

In response to the Tower God’s command, Souvik and Fernanda vaporized before Matt’s eyes, their final expressions a mix of fear and confusion.

Backing away rapidly from the bed with his barely functioning body, Matt was unable to stop the despair and tangible fear he felt at seeing the extinguishing of Souvik’s and Fernanda’s familiar faces, illusory though they might be. He longed to escape this room, but his body didn’t have the vitality to obey his will.

It’s me, Matt confirmed, analyzing the man in bed for some subtle deviation. But it was him. An exact copy.

“You too! Get out!” the Tower God barked at Matt, pointing his finger at the door to the icy hellscape.

“What’s wrong with him?” May asked, looking Matt over with sad, wistful eyes.

The man in bed shook his head. “I don’t care,” he said resolutely. He kissed May with equal depth and detachment. It was clearly an action he had executed countless times, but it still held meaning, no matter how disparately scant.

“He can stand there while we sleep for all I care,” the Tower God exuded as he lay his head back on the crimson pillow.

Matt couldn’t pull his eyes from May. And all the while, her probing, sorrowful stare never wavered from his eyes either. The flickering light of the amorphous energy cast swimming shadows across her face, rhythmically occluding and spotlighting her features.

“I feel bad for him,” May admitted.

The man in bed huffed with impatience. “You,” the Tower God demanded to Matt with vehemence bordering on disgust. “Leave. Make your own tower. Go away.”

Go away, Matt repeated and nearly laughed in horror.

“I would if I could,” Matt seethed, his body sprawled on the ground before them. “Just tell me how to be young again,” Matt demanded. “I’m tired of this. Tired of everything.”

May rose from the bed, leaving the Matt in bed grasping for her.

“No!” the Tower God demanded pathetically, his voice cracking in despair. “Come back to me, May. Ignore him!”

May peered over her shoulder at the petulant man-child shouting orders at her, but she didn’t obey.

Is that really me? Matt thought in horror.

May sauntered to Matt, knelt down, and took his frail hand in her own. He felt his chest throb with desperate force, pulsing with energy that tugged him like a braided cord toward May.

“May!” the Tower God shrieked.

May reluctantly ignored his cries and beamed at Matt with her slightly crooked smile. Her eyes were slick with tears, but she hid her sorrow behind a mask of compassion.

“It’s you,” May confirmed to herself in pleasant surprise. “It’s him, Matt,” she said louder to the Tower God. “It’s the one that went to the labs the last time we were awake.”

“I don’t care!” the man shrieked. “Just come back to bed, May! I don’t want to be here!” he pleaded with urgent, desperate anguish.

May shook her head, then rose to address him head-on.

“Did you forget about the procedure?” May offered sweetly, exuding serene patience.

“The procedure,” the Tower God repeated hollowly. “The procedure,” he said again, this time even more distantly.

“Yes,” May confirmed like a caretaker to an overworked patient. “We’ve been asleep a long while. But if he’s back, that means Dr. Heron made progress.”

“Dr. Heron?” the Tower God repeated with some confusion.

May turned to Matt, her smile blossoming. “He’s just a little confused,” she explained. “He doesn’t wake up very often anymore, and when he does, it takes him a few minutes to recollect…well…everything.”

“I’m the one that’s confused,” Matt cried. “I’m insane. This is all a dream. And I’m…I’m him. We’re both me.”

Can they make sense of all this? Can she help me? Matt wondered hopelessly.

“The procedure,” the Tower God announced with an air of recollection. He rose from the bed and strode to Matt, taking his place beside May. He wore a pair of crimson boxers and a golden robe made of the same silken material as May’s. He was like a totally different person from before. His wide eyes gleamed with a supernatural, directionless hunger, and each of his breaths was a focused, premeditated effort to respire. Every ounce of his being was directed toward Matt and Matt alone.

“This isn’t an act, then?” the Tower God inquired of Matt with a glimmer of rage and a measure of amusement.

An act? Matt seethed inwardly. A fucking act?

Matt couldn’t help laughing hopelessly at the very premise of the Tower God’s question. Then his laughter turned to anger, and anger turned to rage.

“An act?” Matt roared at the younger version of himself standing beside the only person who really mattered to him. “Fuck you!” Matt growled. “Fuck you for existing. Fuck you for making me exist. Fuck you for dragging me into your insanity!”

The Tower God’s eyes flared with equal wrath and intrigue. “I’m part of the chain too,” the Tower God seethed. “You can’t blame me for doing the exact same thing you’ll do eventually. The same thing that was done to me!”

“You’re just another copy, then?” Matt lamented.

The wild-eyed Tower God’s lips twitched with ravenous anger. “Who knows. I don’t remember being copied, but eternity makes you,” he hesitated, searching for the word with miserable groans, “confused,” he said, finally deciding on the right word. “No matter what I remember, the odds that I’m the original are one in infinity. So, I assume that, yes, I am also a copy.”

“You assume?” Matt gasped, surprised that the Tower God would be satisfied with such uncertainty.

“What does it matter?” the Tower God exploded, making May jump to caress his shoulders in an effort to relax him. “Everything is unknowable. You know that,” the Tower God concluded with grave finality.

“Where is the original?” Matt pressed.

The Tower God sighed and looked at May. But May smiled and even offered a tiny jump in celebration.

“Your plan’s working!” May told him excitedly, and she clasped a hand over his, then turned to survey Matt.

The Tower God nodded with taciturn consideration at May’s words and said, “Maybe.”

“Please,” Matt interjected, begging through his gritted teeth. “How do I become young again?”

“Just be young,” the Tower God intoned simply.

Matt felt his skin contract suddenly at the Tower God’s words. His muscles tightened and the aching pain emanating through his every cell subsided. Energy coursed through him to a hyper degree, tightening and strengthening his muscles to the point of vein-popping dehydration.

“Don’t overdo it,” the Tower God said with grim but tangible amusement. It was as if this were the first time he had ever experienced novelty through all eternity. “You’ll constrict oxygen to your heart. Unless you convert your body to no longer run on oxygen. Not that it matters, really. You’ll just die and reset to your subconscious self-image when you return from your inner world.”

Matt didn’t care that the Tower God’s words released him from his old age, nor did he care what this original version of himself had to tell him. Not in that moment. Only one thing mattered.

Matt stood, easily lifting himself to his feet using his newfound form.

“Is she the original?” Matt demanded, pointing at May.

The Tower God shook his head, clearly enjoying Matt’s confusion in the same way a sinister parent might prey on a child’s ignorance. “What do you mean?” the Tower God checked.

“Is she the original May?”

The Tower God shook his head once more. “The original May?” he checked again.

“Don’t play dumb!” Matt told his mirror image.

The Tower God nodded with some distant and terrible understanding. “There is no original May,” the Tower God explained with torturous self-pity. “There’s no original anyone. Everything. Everyone. It’s our creation. We are alone. We have always been alone.”

“You’re not alone!” May urged the Tower God, and she hugged him tightly. The golden-robed man closed his eyes and breathed her in, moaning with terrible agony.

He’s insane, Matt understood. Like me.

The other Matt clung to May and she clung back, embracing him as if Matt were not even present.

May is how he…how I…endure this eternity, Matt realized. He fell to his knees and let his head fall into his open palms.

“Who is she then?” he sobbed, forcing himself to confront May’s existence.

The Tower God opened his eyes and looked upon Matt with blazing self-hatred. “A physical manifestation of our desires?” he offered without urgency. “A random algorithm of our mind?” he nearly growled. “I don’t know,” he seethed, churning each syllable with all-consuming rancor.

His words made Matt physically wince.

“A random fucking algorithm?” Matt repeated, refusing to accept that this soul-rotten specter could possibly be his own self.

“You’ve had enough,” the Tower God announced like a hammer against lead. “Make a tower. Go to sleep. Let a copy continue with the procedure. You’ve done enough as it is.” The Tower God’s tone was authoritative, but the offer implied compassion.

It’s not compassion, Matt told himself. All this miserable being knows is himself. All he has is himself.

May lowered her head seemingly in response to Matt’s thoughts.

He doesn’t deserve her, Matt concluded. He felt that his heart might rend at the implication that he didn't deserve May either.

“Just build a tower?” Matt repeated with disgust. “Like you did?”

The Tower God just nodded with reticent acceptance. “Like we all do eventually. To keep the world from disrupting sleep. Only now, things are different.”

May had a sparkle in her eye. “The procedure,” she explained with hopeful surprise.

“She’s real,” Matt demanded, ignoring everything else but May. “She is all that matters,” he raged. “This is all just a dream, so who gives a shit about a procedure in a dream? We need to get back to the real world. I need to get back to her!” Matt proclaimed.

“Quiet!” the Tower God roared. “She isn’t real, you addle-brained imbecile. The procedure made you forget. And that’s a good thing. But I’ve already been through this over and over and over again to the foundations of infinity. There is no outside world. There is no reality. Not in the way we want there to be. There are only dreams within dreams!”

The fissure of coursing energy suddenly flared in brightness behind Matt, reminding Matt again of that other world.

“You’re wrong,” Matt asserted. “I’ve been to another world. I’ve heard May’s voice. I’ve –”

“That’s from my mind,” the Tower God churned with scorn. “You are me.”

Matt shook his head, wanting anything else to be true besides sharing an identity with this broken man.

“We’ve been through this,” the Tower God pressed like steam through metal slits. “Even if there is a world beyond this one, it is unreachable. But the world inside,” the Tower God said, and he let his eyes glide over May with palpable, ancient pleasure. “The world inside is reachable. It is attainable. It is accessible. And you are proof that we are finally on the right track.”

The Tower God lifted a hand and twisted his wrist, commanding a section of the tower to disappear. The outside world was still the same icy hellscape all around them as far as Matt could see except for the tower and the immediate area around it. In the distance, the veins of ice snaked their way toward the tower inch by certain inch.

“The encroaching ice is forcing the procedure to be successful,” the Tower God stated, marveling at his own work. “And the success of the procedure, in turn, speeds up the ice. It’s a looping feedback system. And it’s working.”

The Tower God took May by the shoulders and gazed deeply into her eyes as he spoke his next words. “Soon, the procedure will be a total success, and we’ll go inside forever. We’ll let this whole world crystallize to absolute zero in the path of the infinite blizzard. Everything will freeze to perfect stillness, and the more my mind crystallizes into a fossil of itself, the deeper into the dream I’ll fall. There'll be no world for me to wake to. There will only be the inside world. There will only be May's world.” The Tower God smiled with incredible elation, ecstasy smeared across his maniacal features. “No more interruptions. No more worry. No more guessing. No more eternal, existential, ontological bullshit,” he sprayed, his arms outspread in practiced triumph.

The wall of the tower rematerialized, closing them off from the outside world once more.

Matt almost pitied this being forced to play chess against his own mind for all eternity.

And I’m just another chess piece, Matt realized in horror. And I’m the chess board. And I’m the very concept of chess itself.

“No!” Matt shouted, despite tasting a mere morsel of the insanity the Tower God had feasted on for all of time. “It’s false. It’s illusory. We can’t give up on her!”

Matt turned to May and pleaded, “You aren’t just a random algorithm. You’re real, May. You are!”

The Tower God allowed himself a huff of amused laughter. “I love it,” he breathed, watching Matt fail to wrestle with his own state of being. “This is incredible.”

Matt felt like a slug being viewed under a microscope. All his actions and words were just part of this false god’s experimentation.

“Did you name yourself God?” Matt asked in disgust.

“No,” the Tower God answered easily.

“That’s what the others call this place,” Matt accused. “The Tower of God. And you are the so-called god.”

“The denizens of this world, my mind, refer to me as God,” the Tower God admitted. “They have sentience. They think critically. And it is a logical conclusion. You and I, us, we are God in this place. We are their creators…and destroyers,” he said, clearly referring to his vaporizing of Fernanda and Souvik.

Matt nearly jumped at him, but the Tower God said, “Feel free to just recreate them.”

Recreate, Matt repeated inwardly with profound, aching sadness. They’re just creations. Not my friends. Not my coworkers. They’re just random dream characters.

Matt balled his fists and gritted his teeth and squeezed at his existential anguish.

Why? he pleaded. Why is this happening?

The Tower God and May simply stared at Matt, one set of eyes a fiery blaze, the other a tranquil invitation.

The warping amorphous energy suddenly lashed out at Matt, singeing the air near his left ear and forcing him to move a few steps closer to his mirror image and his love.

“What is that?” Matt demanded, pointing to the warping, flashing energy.

The Tower God and May shared a confused glance.

“What?” the Tower God asked simply.

He’s toying with me, Matt concluded.

“That!” Matt demanded, still aiming his finger at the amorphous space.

“It must be the procedure that is making him see things,” May considered.

The Tower God nodded reasonably, as if considering this a minor side effect in the grand scheme of his ultimate design.

Can they really not see it? Matt wondered, unable to trust them any more than he could trust his own corroded mind.

The Tower God inspected Matt and sighed, coming to some forlorn conclusion. He closed his eyes and seemed to enter a momentary state of REM as his eyes moved beneath his lids with incredible rapidity. After only a second or two, a perfect copy exited the Tower God’s body as if the Tower God were merely a mirror to walk in and out of. The copy was naked, though he didn’t seem to take any notice.

The Tower God and the copy nodded to each other, then the copy waved his hand, materializing Fernanda and Souvik back into existence. Like before, their muscles rippled with impossible mass, and they wore nothing more than neolithic cloth across their genitals.

Then, without taking any notice of the reality fissure or Matt, the trio left the room, heading in the direction of the labs.

“More procedures?” Matt accused.

“Of course,” the Tower God confirmed. “Yours was a partial success. No doubt Dr. Heron will find a way to achieve complete success. It’s not like he can run out of lab rats. Or time. When the procedure is perfected, I will go to the labs myself.”

Matt thought of Fernanda and Souvik and asked, “Why them? Why did you conjure them in particular? You couldn’t even bother to give them proper clothing.”

The Tower God actually chuckled at Matt’s words.

“I’ve made them before. Why even bother thinking of something new anymore? And their clothes? What does it matter?” the Tower God snickered sincerely at Matt, enjoying his confusion with incredible elation.

“You should go inside for a while,” the Tower God offered. “Inside your head, I mean. Until you remember everything, Dr. Heron can give you something to keep you heavily asleep. So, build a tower. Go inside.”

Matt remembered the bottle of Serotel that Dr. Heron handed Fernanda before they left the labs.

“He gave Fernanda a pill bottle,” Matt said.

“Fernanda?” the Tower God asked, clearly caught off guard.

“The large woman you vaporized!” Matt barked, loathing the fact that he didn't even remember her name.

“You named her?” the Tower God checked with further amusement.

“That’s her name,” Matt corrected. “From my dreams. Her name is Fernanda.”

The Tower God shook his head in pleasant surprise. “I never named her. Interesting.”

Matt was reminded that he was just a lab rat in the eyes of this other self.

But I’m changed, Matt seethed. I’m not like him. I’m not him!

He looked back with incredible trepidation at the coursing fissure in the fabric of space. The flashing RGB glow of the energy nearly hypnotized him and felt as though it were calling out to him, beckoning him with abject insistence.

Maybe that’s what I’m meant to do, Matt considered in horror. Maybe that’s the way out, he thought, imagining his body being shredded in an instant, atom by atom. He knew death meant nothing here, but the feeling couldn’t be assuaged.

Why can’t they see it, Matt wondered feverishly. And if it’s the result of the procedure, then what else did the procedure do to my mind?

Matt shook his head in painful consideration and nearly forgot about the others for just a moment.

The Tower God bellowed, “Enough. I’ve had enough. Back to bed, May. Now.”

May shook her head and gazed at Matt bittersweetly. “I want to help him. I –”

“I said now!” the Tower God ordered, jarring May and making her wince in pitiful submission.

“Don’t talk to her like that!” Matt barked, and the sharpness in his voice created an unintentional shockwave that slammed against May, knocking her to the ground. The Tower God, however, was untouched.

“May!” Matt shrieked, “I’m sorry!”

Matt lunged for her, but in an instant, the Tower God was in front of Matt, blocking his path.

“Move!” Matt ordered. He tried pushing the Tower God out of his way, but it was like trying to move an entire mountain.

I’m still too weak, Matt realized.

“You still have much to remember,” the Tower God intoned. “Like that you and I can’t destroy each other,” he explained with disdain.

Matt ignored the mirror image of himself and checked on May. Seeming unhurt, she lifted herself from the floor and smiled at Matt as if in understanding that he hadn’t intended harming her.

“I’m done with you,” the Tower God issued. Lifting his arm, the Tower God placed his hand against Matt’s chest, then he pushed with a fraction of his strength, sending Matt flying across the room despite Matt not even feeling the Tower God’s hit.

As Matt’s body whirled across the room, he flailed his limbs in a wild attempt to stabilize himself. His back slammed hard against the wall of the tower, but that pain was nothing compared to the searing agony pulsing through his hand in a heartbeat-synced rhythm that seemed to directly mirror the pulsing of the reality fissure.

Matt shakily lifted his left hand and gasped at the sight of blood freely pumping from jagged stumps of blood-slicked flesh that had once been his ring and pinky finger.

“Fuck!” Matt seethed. He looked up and followed the trail of blood back to the reality fissure.

My hand must have passed through it, Matt gasped in horror.

“Matthew!” May screamed as Matt cradled his hand to his stomach in a futile attempt to stop the profuse bleeding.

Absorbing Matt’s incredible pain and confusion, May broke away from the Tower God’s hold and strode to Matt. Her crooked smile tangibly washed away the searing pain, and as she took his blood-soaked hand into her own, he felt warmth emanating and flowing through him from the point of contact.

“It’ll all be all right,” May assured him, not caring that she was getting covered in his blood.

It’s her, Matt gasped, staring into her eyes with longing desperation. But it isn’t, he confirmed in the same breath, his mind like a mine-filled battlefield.

“Good god!” Matt shrieked in existential agony. He clung to May and sobbed as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. May clung right back, caressing his back with her hands and running her soft lips against the skin of his exposed cheek.

She isn’t real, Matt knew. But it didn’t matter. She was here in his arms.

May, Matt cried pitifully within, and she gripped him even tighter in response.

“Take her with you,” the Tower God offered from behind them. “Maybe she can help with the hallucinations.”

Take her with you, Matt repeated with mounting anger. Like she’s just property.

Matt clung to her more tightly, to the only person in all of reality and unreality who mattered or could possibly matter.

He thinks of her as a random algorithm, Matt remembered with revulsion. Something plumbed from his mind. A figment of thought.

May! Matt cried within, then he pulled away and gazed into her eyes, into the core of her being.

“I don’t know how I know for sure,” Matt told her, “but I just know. I just know with total certainty that you are real. The real you is out there somewhere. And I will find you, May. I will.”

Tears filled May’s eyes, and she smiled and hugged Matt, cherishing every moment with him.

Matt let his eyes fall on the Tower God, who just stared at both of them with forlorn indifference. The light flashed across his features, reminding Matt of the inkblot and the Reaper.

Maybe the procedure is bringing me closer to the true reality, Matt considered hopefully. Maybe that’s what that energy is. Maybe that’s why I can see it and he can’t.

The Tower God continued staring at Matt as if studying him down to the nano-level of detail.

He thinks I’m a broken version of himself. But maybe I’m closer to my true self than he is, Matt pondered.

“Why isn’t your hand healing?” the Tower God inquired ominously. “How did the wall chop your fingers off in the first place?”

Matt shook his head at his other self with hateful scorn. “I told you. It’s that space of glowing energy. My hand passed through it when you hit me.”

The Tower God shook his head with grim indifference.

“Go to sleep. Your mind is broken,” the Tower God concluded more to himself than to Matt. Then he turned on his heel and got back into bed.

“You’re just going to go back to sleep?” Matt asked.

“What else is there?” the Tower God intoned, and for the first time, Matt could hear in the Tower God a tributary of lamentation connected to an infinite ocean of helpless despair.

The Tower God lifted his arm, and a copy of May materialized beneath it. She cuddled up to the Tower God and smiled with a perfectly contented grin. Probing with his hand behind his pillow, the Tower God brought out a bottle full of red pills. He practically broke off the cap opening the bottle, then tilted back his head and poured the pills down his throat as if they were a free-flowing liquid. At least a hundred pills cascaded down the Tower God’s throat.

The Tower God put his arm back around the new copy of May and let the pill bottle fall beside her, spilling crimson fragments of insanity across the crimson sheets and covers.

Matt could only feel disgust for his original self.

He gave up on her, Matt concluded. He gave up on finding the real world and the real May.

“You’re just giving up?” Matt barked, but the other Matt was already fast asleep.

May squeezed Matt’s unwounded hand and smiled her serene smile.

“Come on,” she said, motioning toward the exit door.

Matt looked back at the tendrilling fissure in space, but May’s pull convinced him to leave it behind with the Tower God.

They exited hand-in-hand into the foyer and the unreal world. Blood still flowed from his hand, and though May’s touch had significantly numbed the pain, the ache was ever-present.

The titan wearing Chike’s features still stood outside, silently guarding the sleeping Tower God.

Was it all in my head, Matt wondered sorrowfully, thinking back to what he remembered of Chike. Were you never really like a brother to me? Are you just a fucking thought in my head?

May’s grasp brought his mind back to the present, and he shook his head, refusing to give his thoughts any credence.

She’s real, Matt demanded his mind to accept. May smiled at him, her features like moonlight in endless darkness. She has to be real somewhere.

Chike stood as distant and enormous as the infinite world beyond the tower. Matt forced himself to step away from the giant, but he didn’t know what to do next.

Should I undergo the procedure again? Should I just go back?

He looked out at the blizzard, and then he looked at his hands, which were young despite the fresh wound.

I can do whatever I want. I just have to remember that, Matt told himself. I can heal my hand. I can go out into the blizzard. I can go out there and search for her, not just go to sleep and give up, Matt thought resolutely as he imagined the Tower God with disgust.

“Are you out there, May?” Matt asked this woman of his dreams who he hoped, despite all doubt, was real somewhere, somehow.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, unfathomable pity and compassion for Matt filling her every cell. “But the other you in the tower…he thought so,” she offered.

“What?” Matt checked, caught off guard. “But he called you a random algorithm.”

May shrugged with understanding. “He gets frustrated. You get frustrated, I mean.” She nodded to herself; clearly she had already gone over all this with herself. “Anyone would in your situation,” she offered with sage understanding. “But deep down inside, he thinks the same way you do. He thinks deep down there must be a real world beyond all this. How could there not be? The alternative is that you created the very concepts constituting reality: the need to breathe, shape and form, even the very laws of physics.” A wave of empathetic pain shot through her suddenly. “You’re the result of his mind refusing to accept the alternative. It’s too painful to even consider. It’s too overwhelming to even fathom.”

Matt considered the possibility that the very basis of reality and every concept within it were his own unique creation, and the concept of a real world on which all his creations were based was itself just another one of his concepts. Taken even further, his own individuality, his own identity, may very well be the idea of some greater machination with only a patterned and detached conceptualization of self.

No! Matt pleaded inwardly, pushing away the thought that his very self was just arbitrary, meaningless conceptualization.

May nodded, once again seeing Matt’s existential horror an uncountable number of times. “That’s why,” she said with eyes full of tears, but her soothing smile never faltered. “That’s why I’m happy the procedure seems to be working. This world is falling apart. It’s been falling apart. It’s a reflection of your own mind. What you need is a reset, and I’m hoping the procedure does that. I hope it just resets everything. This place wasn’t always a form of hell,” she urged. “It was a paradise once. A place of extraordinary interdimensional wonder and beauty. And before that – there was no before that. It was always a paradise. Until…until he…until you…”

“I’m not him,” Matt rumbled.

May nodded. “Okay, Matt. You are separate now,” she accepted, allowing him to believe anything that might bring him comfort. “Either way,” May continued, “he thinks he can override his own mind and permanently stay asleep in the world within. But it’s never going to work, Matt. The mind will always come back to itself.”

That’s what the Reaper dream was, Matt told himself. My mind forcing itself back to this place.

Reading his mind, May nodded in agreement with Matt’s thoughts.

Because she is my mind, Matt told himself sullenly.

“The video game dream you experienced,” May said. “That’s right. The mind will always find a way to force itself to look at the light. To know the truth. You can only trick yourself for so long,” May explained bittersweetly.

Matt considered just falling to his knees and crying out in helpless despair. He felt no closer to any actual answers.

What’s the point? Matt mentally languished. Of anything.

May placed her gentle hand on Matt’s shoulder, and he felt surging energy in his solar plexus coursing back and forth between him and May.

“Go inside,” May told him gently. “Go be with her. With me. Leave this place for a while. We’ll look after your body out here – not that anything can permanently hurt you out here.”

We’ll look after, Matt repeated in his mind. He felt their presence, and then he turned to see Fernanda, Souvik, and Chike smiling with open arms. They were exactly how he remembered them in the world inside his mind.

They took a step toward him, surrounding him with warmth and familiarity.

Matt couldn’t help lowering his head and sobbing as a strangely comforting feeling of security washed over him. He was reminded of the video game dream – stranded in this infinite delirium, surrounded by his friends and his lover who were helping him overcome the impossible.

“There’s no way out,” he told them, shaking as he sobbed. Souvik placed a hand on Matt’s right shoulder as Chike placed a hand on his left shoulder. Fernanda’s hand gripped his back lovingly. May stepped forward and hugged her arms around Matt’s torso, leaving no gap between them. The energy flowed through May, then spread through Matt to the others, making him moan with the tingling feeling of orgasmic pleasure mixed with pins and needles against his flesh. From behind him, Fernanda offered the pill bottle, holding it in front of him, level with his eyes.

Seeing the pills injected Matt with the grim, familiar possibility that he was just crazy – that everything was just a fever dream burning forever in the unquenchable embers of insanity.

Maybe this is all in my head, Matt reminded himself gratingly. Maybe I’ll wake up in a hospital and get treated with medicine that works. And maybe one day I’ll actually die, and I won’t have to suffer for eternity.

Matt burst into tears. It was all too much. Everything. Everyone. His very self.

The others nodded with patient acceptance of Matt’s mind.

The cap to the pill bottle popped off on its own, and Fernanda tilted the bottle, displaying the crimson pills to Matt.

Serotel, Matt lamented. Just like in May’s world.

The energy surged and he pulled back, resisting the urge to scream out. The others seemed to take on some of the force of the energy’s power as they grunted and braced themselves against it.

May caught Matt’s stare, and with just her eyes, she offered him the whole of her being.

“I love you,” he told her as infinity licked at the periphery of his mind with unrelenting savageness.

“I’m going to find you,” he told her. “I’m going to find all of you.”

They all nodded, placidly accepting his words.

“We know,” May told him with tranquil certainty. “We’re counting on you. We know you’ll find a way and make everything all right.”

The others nodded in agreement with May just as a bolt of energy lashed through Matt, making them all tense against the force. But they never let go of him.

“But go inside now,” May continued. “Take a break from this world. Go be with her…with me. Maybe some of your memories will come back, for better or worse.”

Matt envisioned sitting beside May in her apartment, but the thought was tarnished by the awareness that it might just be a reflection of the Tower God’s room.

“I love you, May,” Matt said in defiance of his own mind.

May pulled herself to him and kissed Matt passionately. The sweetness of her tongue and lips reached deep into his mind and pacified reaches of insanity that he was likely better off never remembering.

May broke away and eyed the pills.

With a nod and the cocking back of his head, Matt signaled to Fernanda to pour them into his mouth. He was reminded of the great flow of crimson that the Tower God had also allowed to fill his throat.

He gave up, Matt seethed. He just gave up on May. But I won’t.

Fernanda allowed a dozen or so pills to fill Matt’s mouth before lifting the bottle back up. Unable to swallow them in the same fashion as the Tower God, Matt was forced to chew them, bursting slightly viscous yet flavorless crimson fluid into his mouth. Some of it leaked out of the corners of his lips, leaving crimson streaks running down his chin and continuing to flow toward the surging energy in his and May’s chests.

He imagined the May of the inside world again, and this time they were back in the bar.

I wish I could go back, Matt thought, back to that night. I wish I could just properly explain everything to her, even if she is only in my head. I just want a normal night out with May. I just want all this to end.

His eyelids were heavy, and he didn’t bother trying to open them as a great warmth blanketed his body, making him feel weightless and unrestricted.

The fluid flowing from his lips reached his chest, and a sudden explosion of energy shot through him. The others braced him against the overwhelming force.

As if she were miles away, he could hear May chanting her soothing lullaby. It felt like an impenetrable, guiding levy against the unrelenting shockwave and jarring vibrations of the energy surging through all of them.

She is all that matters.