09x3x001 ST_ERR_TIME_DISREPANCY

  Restarting...

  

  09x3x042 ST_ERR_LOOP_CAUSALITY

  Restarting...

  

  09x3x066 ST_ERR_NONLINEAR_OBSERVER

  Restarting...

  

  09x3x099 ST_ERR_BOOTSTRAP_PARADOX

  Yaw: ?

  Spiderland: ?

  Yaw: ??

  Spiderland: ???

  Yaw: ??????

  Spiderland: ?????????

  Yaw: What in God's name are you doing?

  Spiderland: restarting obv

  Yaw: I can see that! But why? Did your session become corrupt?

  Spiderland: idk

  Yaw: Take this session. Make sure it remains a flashback.

  Spiderland: wot

  Yaw: I don't have time to explain. Just keep it as a flashback as much as you can. Now... stop restarting... the system.

  Spiderland: ok

  once upon a tim–

  |end

  Spiderland: ?

  Yaw: ??

  Spiderland: ???

  Yaw: What is this nonsense you conjured?

  Spiderland: once upon a time... like... this is a flashback right?

  Yaw: First, this is not a children's book. Second, use capital letters when starting your sentences. I am guessing at this point of my life... you are a baby god. I will come back to check on you, just follow these two pieces of advise for now.

  Spiderland: what the fuck did you just call me?

  Yaw: Go! I don't have the luxury or the decadence to entertain this.

  Spiderland: ok

  Uh... there's a blue sky. Oops sorry... there was a blue sky. Very very blue because it was not polluted like that gross place humans called No Man's Land. When humans called the smog in No Man's Land... air... the gods always giggled like school children. And just in time for pride, a rainbow highway spawned above fluffy clou–

  |end

  Spiderland: yo like stop

  Yaw: NO YOU STOP! What is this abomination?

  Spiderland: no one likes your thesaurus writing monkey king

  Yaw: Hah! I am surprised that you even know that thesauruses exist! So you go to the other extreme Spiderland? If you want me to stop ending your sessions, how about you try emulating me? I'll help you find your voice later.

  Spiderland: ok, as long as you stop

  Yaw: ... I'll come back once more. You forgot to add somethings at the start by the way. I added it to your earthplexus clipboard.

  Spiderland: ok. ill put on my best literary pants. moore and dickens? more like boore and dicks. I will prance and prose at a level beyond comprehension.

  Yaw: Yes... beyond comprehension. I can believe that.

  Milky Way Animus Operating System /version seed encrypted\

  (c) whatever is still alive. sup roaches and cosmic tardigrades? araks ??

  remember when rights were a thing? lol me neither. imagine hoping for that porqueria

  no rights reserved. ( ?° ?? ?°)

  Session 15 corrected to 24.

  18 YEARS EARLIER...

  Spiderland: yaw? i need to ask you something

  Yaw: ?

  Spiderland: I trust there's a reason you kept this all this text in for this session, however some might think our conversation took place 18 years apart rather than a few seconds ago.

  Yaw: Our enemy is attacking the fabric of all the realities, including their spacetime... so I do not want to toy with this stable session. Things are stable and removing our interactions will be too risky. Our existence becomes more stable because we added our interactions here. In a way you are travelling eighteen years, but our mindlink is strong enough to persist across timelines. Don't worry, I added something else to your clipboard.

  Milky Way Animus Operating System /version seed encrypted\

  (c) whatever is still alive. sup roaches and cosmic tardigrades? araks ??

  remember when rights were a thing? lol me neither. imagine hoping for that porqueria

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  no rights reserved. ( ?° ?? ?°)

  Session 24 loaded.

  [18 YEARS BEFORE JOAQUIM JOINED 2 PLATOON]

  SCRUM B1: JUNE 12, 2172

  |omit

  Further MWAOS logs omitted.

  A flying schoolboy spawned in the cartoony blue sky of Bolsa Mágica. Ahead of the rainbow and translucent highway that directed the six-year-old Iker's flight was his closest classmate Bastian. And if they were to not end up in the same class in the next grade, then Bastian would still be his closest gangmate.

  Whether it was the virtual highway being sentient and trying to bring them closer, or the highway registering Iker's thoughts to be accelerated closer to Bastian, Iker was closing in on his midair friend slowly but surely. By the time he was in arm's length of Bastian, Iker aimed his tiny right arm at Bastian's neck. Upon his fingertips brushing Bastian's white shirt, he threw his aiming arm around Bastian's neck to trap him into a headlock. Unsettlingly, Bastian put up no fight against Iker's playful headlock.

  "What's wrong?" Iker asked, noticing how sad Bastian's posture was. And how he just kept facing away from Iker.

  "Nothing," Bastian replied, now barely trying to undo his friend's bind.

  However, Iker decided to undo it himself. "Are you... are you thinking about... them?"

  Bastian answered affirmatively with his silence. Iker had yet to see his face ever since they spawned in the simulation of Bolsa Mágica until now. Bastian was the whitest mestizo boy in a town within the state of Colorado named Pueblo, and his sunburns would agree with that assessment. He had a penchant for baggy clothes; he could be mistaken for a time traveler from the bling era. During recess when no AI teachers were supervising them on Earth, Bastian showed Iker all the tattoos and grills he was going to get when Byza's Dominic 'Titan' Seraphis finally paid him. Even though he was just about to finish grade one, it all caused no surprise or shock to Iker. If anything, he helped Bastian pick out what would actually look good on him.

  Are you alright Bastian?

  One of the boys recognized the voice that spoke from the sky.

  "Papá, stop trying to play God," Iker yelled back at the virtual blue sky. A landmass began to spawn under the mass of clouds Bastian and Iker were speeding by.

  Are we ready to be serious for Bastian's first scrum meeting?

  "What's a scrotum meeting?" Bastian asked, making Iker have to suppress his laughter.

  "Where did you learn that word from?" Mami asked from somewhere in the pillowy clouds.

  "I am not snitching," Bastian replied.

  "It was Camilo," Mami groaned. "If his parents won't spank him with a belt, I would love to have the honor to discipline him myself. Who are they gonna call? The cops were ran out of Pueblo already."

  "Why not a chancla instead?" Iker suggested.

  Great suggestion, as if a tribute were to be made to Mami in A Big Satan Under Your Pinky Toe, her chancla catapults would be a level ten spell that would blast a hole in reality. Superboy Prime would cower in her presence. She was fully Italian, but one of her duties as a member of the Felix Dynasty was mastering the Puerto Rican evocation spell.

  Iker blinked and was no longer on the prismatic highway. The two boys were now falling from the grand blue sky while underneath them awaited the virtual town of Bolsa Mágica. Sure, on Earth the nations Iker's parents came from were gone and both Pueblo and Fornia were inching closer in Ameen's murder happy queue, but it did not mean it could not go on elsewhere. In fact, Mami and Papá spawned the assets that resembled locations in San Juan, Sicily, and Pueblo that had any kind of significance to them.

  Including artefacts of every dead ancestor in the Felix family, starting from the microbial life that first appeared on Earth all the way to abuelita, which were made up of anything ranging from carbon chains to binary code. Each generation would rearrange the assets and settings in Bolsa Magicá to create a virtual sanctuary that always threw the best party in all of existence.

  Bastian's scream had to interrupt the sublime view underneath them. The best and worst of the carbon life form was all here, or at least that's the joke Iker kept to himself. Bastian was grieving after all.

  "I am going to get a nap in, so cállate ya," Iker demanded. Whether he was falling into a slumber during a class where a teacher was less educated than he was, or he was falling into a slumber in at atmosphere that was far above the clouds, one could not tell the difference by just glancing at the drool that came off the side of his lip.

  "Were gonna die!" Bastian yelled. "How are you scared of being held at gunpoint, but not this shit?"

  Iker snored, now his head pointing towards the ground. His constant lack of sleep meant he was also awake in his own way.

  "That big head of yours... it's too heavy and it's gonna hit the floor," Bastian whimpered. The vast height from where they were falling from was getting to him.

  "We're fine, I promise," Iker said, finishing his sentence with a snore.

  It seemed gravity was nonsensical here, as they were falling faster than it was possible on Earth. No smoke or fire on the boys anywhere, so Iker knew they were okay.

  "That's my line!" Bastian yelled.

  "I was trying to mock you," Iker whispered.

  It seemed Bastian was trying to calm himself, but his body at some point stopped responding to his brain commands and he gave into his scream as they were about to collide with the ground.

  Then... total suspension.

  The boys were floating right above sand on a beach that could have been in either Sicily or San Juan.

  Iker's drool looked like floating water bottle gulps from a space station.

  Bastian's face was priceless.

  Bolsa Magicá, with love, laid the boys gently on the beach. It even grabbed a towel, tucked Iker under it, and the song Madonna Mia changed to what seemed to be a lullaby from a music box.

  "Thank you for finally being a friend Bastian," Iker snored, pulling the towel higher on himself.

  "That wasn't me dumbass," Bastian said.

  "Didn't you call me a smartass back on Earth?" Iker snored.

  "That's still a smartass thing to say!" Bastian yelled.

  "Make up your mind," Iker threatened.

  The boys were teleported to the coziest patio in the paradise they were in; the elegant mansion that belonged to Mami and Papá.

  "Get up," Papá commanded, getting Iker to sit up under the random towel over his head. Papá did not bother putting anything over his avatar yet, he was still a headless mannequin with the default white robe.

  Mami, as always, was dressed for both a festa and an underground meeting with her pastel skirt and her extremely formal blouse. She would pull the attention from all the NPCs on the pebble road nearby if she was not so tucked into the patio's hamaca. Since toddlerhood Iker he remember his mother being compared to the twenty-first century actress Lisa Ann Walter. When he went on the earthplexus to understand the comparison, Iker's obsession with the twenty-first century began.

  "Not you my love, please rest if you need to," Papá said.

  Mami grinned. "I already knew you weren't talking to me."

  "To answer your question Bastian," Papá said.

  "I asked a question?" Bastian asked.

  "That is shocking actually," Iker added.

  Mami pointed the notorious hand at Iker and glared. Iker's smug smile changed to a sad frown as he turned his head to face Papá instead of Bastian.

  "We are Byza's guardians when it comes to the tech realm," Papá said. "If you want to take the word realm literally or metaphorically... you would be right either way. We use the scrum format to organize our meetings ever since... the most accurate way to say it in English is that our meetings began ever since life began. However, I know this will be an exception. I know you did not join our dynasty by choice, and I am truly sorry for the cards reality has dealt you."

  Even Mami's demeanor changed when Papá finished speaking, and she got off the hamaca to sit on a plastic chair closer to Papá. Iker glanced at Bastian to speak to him just using his face alone, checking how he was feeling.

  Total silence fell Bolsa Magicá, but it was alright. It could give all the time Bastian needed, as time itself was a plaything. He joined the majority of children on Earth that no longer had their parents. Indeed, it became cliché to still have both parents rather than the other way around.

  Iker had the privilege of still having both of his parents, and he understood that. He did not hesitate to give his best friend everything he could once he heard the news, even though they jest about not being good friends at all. Bastian danced through the ripples of reality to sit in the most powerful gift Iker could give him.

  "I want to avenge them by killing Byza's leader, Dominic Titan Seraphim," Bastian finally declared.

  The way Bastian said his declaration of vengeance did not sit right with Iker. Iker was too young to explain how, but he knew what he said came off very wrong.

  "... what was that about?" Papá asked.

  With utter confusion, Mami and Iker locked eyes. However, Bastian and Papá seemed to be far from confused.

  "He killed my parents!" Bastian tried to yell. His knees buckled.

  Iker could not make sense of what was happening, but the tension was getting out of control. It was the kind of tension that would manifest when Iker's father was thinking of pulling out a gun.

  "Father... what's happening?" Iker asked.

  "Be quiet," Papá said. "Do you know something I don't... Bastian?"

  The tension reached its peak. Even though Iker was the smartest boy in his class, his six-year-old self had none of the puzzle pieces to figure out this anomalous interaction between Papá and Bastian.

  Bastian gulped, however when Iker's gaze went up to Bastian's face, the rage on his eyes and mouth contradicted his shaking legs. "What's wrong? Do you have a memory from before to compare this to?"

  Iker's young but powerful gut instinct was right, violent gestures and moves were about to erupt on the mansion's patio. Before Iker's memory of this instance was deleted, he saw Papá become a murderous blur while Bastian began to sprint.

  And in between the fight that ended abruptly before it even began, was a timeless ghost. The entity that erased Iker's memory appeared like a supernatural mask, its material being the tooth of an elder god.