Afoul realities ceased past the fracture across the uncannily black cube.

  Monica 'Primetime' Comsa, while sitting aghast and forgetting to blink altogether, had no intention to find out what was outside. The absence of the notoriously lethal vacuum of space was enough to unsettle her, let alone trying to comprehend everything that happened just now. Nonetheless, the defecation from the ravens and crows diffusing from the cube was making the stay quite uncomfortable, especially with her white heels probably being a pair of satellites for a planet somewhere. As the humid stench pervaded, Monica did not want to find out whether summons still carried on with their biological processes this way.

  Despite all of this, Monica pressed her forearms against the remnants of the cube and slid herself back up gently. Upon discovering the digital grid stretching for eternity waiting for her, she also discovered that the enormous onyx gauntlet still beheld her shattered prison too. Segments of the godly armor broke off to create an adequate staircase towards an invisible floor, as if it was beckoning for her to trigger a cutscene.

  After she carefully stepped outside to keep her bare feet unscathed, Monica made a third discovery.

  The now terrestrial god took on a more perceivable form, mostly still shadow, standing on all fours as a crowned undead centaur at the base of the makeshift staircase. Startled upon finding him, Monica backpedaled towards the crease of the gauntlet's palm.

  "You're... you're the fusion of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Monica yelled. "Please! Please release me from this dimension!"

  "... yes, I did split into four beings in Revelations, however, in this book simulation... I was some sort of amalgamation of a fourteen-year-old boy and twenty-four-year-old man," Iggy's spectral, surprised, and deep voice echoed across the grid.

  Monica lost her balance, grasping the edge of the uncanny cube to catch herself. "What... what are you talking about?"

  "Are you going to keep the pile of birdshit company or are you coming down?" Iggy asked.

  "... you're talking to me as if you know me," Monica said.

  Iggy's lavender glare softened. "It's your first loop, but it ain't mine."

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  JULY 5, 2080

  RESETS: 1

  To call it the most corporeal set of dreams Iker ever had would be an understatement. From a purely guttural reaction, it was impossible for it to be just dreams; he must have had kept sojourning from one reality to another.

  "What's that face about?" Alice asked with a friendly amount of shock. "I never ever seen you make that face before. Ever."

  Iker finally woke up from what felt like a heavy slumber, and Alice came into his vision's focus as she sat on the airplane seat opposite to him. "... are you getting weird dreams too?"

  "Actually... yea," Alice replied. "What did you dream about?"

  Iker yawned before replying. "I was like... some sort of cosmic being and I was trying to grab a cube."

  "Was it a black cube?" Alice asked.

  "Yea. How did you know?" Iker asked back.

  Alice broke eye contact, thanking the attendant that served the pre-celebratory champagne for her. After taking a sip she said, "uhm... I'll embarrass myself by telling you—"

  "By the way, we can't go to our destination," Iker interrupted. It was after those words left his lips that he realized he might look at little less sane to his boss. However, that dream where he had died undoubtedly possessed him to do something from preventing it from happening again.

  "... are you okay?" Alice asked with a raised eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

  A wave of doubt, and Iker internally wincing at himself, got him to course correct altogether. There was no way those dreams were real; he had to be acting silly.

  Get yourself together. You're in front of the CEO.

  "Forget I said anything. I apologize," Iker said. "I am going to go to the bathroom. I actually don't think I ate or drank anything for a while."

  "Ask the attendant for the menu when you're back... or you can use mine. They have an H-Boson Printer here, it can print anything you wanna eat," Alice explained.

  While he walked away from the jet's cockpit towards the back, Iker was of two minds. Cognitive dissonance if you will. There was no way they would go to a hotel to achieve singularity instead of a data center.

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  And yet...

  Ultimately, during this reset, Iker decided that his dreams were just that and that alone. Therefore Iker and Alice died for the second time at the Flamingo Hotel half an hour after touchdown.

  When one platoon's jaunter arrived to the invisible floor, the massive gauntlet behind Monica became a gale of ashes. Her white floral dress swayed with it, and she raised her right arm to shield her eyes from the gust of debris. Upon the gauntlet remains no longer brushing against her body, not only did the eternal grid become visible, but Iggy no longer was a crowned shadow.

  The imperial purple gemstones on Iggy's diadem glimmered as if the stars that had once drifted across the void never despawned, and the suns that had vanished were instead infused into the gold that wrapped around his ghostly pale skull. Nearby the crown were his glowing lavender eyes the complemented all the carefully placed gemstones on both his crown and his armor that covered his human and horse torso. Every shade of dark purple to the inkiest of blacks were carefully selected for his armor and his two sayas by his side.

  "I would prefer to send you to the hell simulation for eternity," Iggy told Monica. "However, we do need you to fight for our team."

  Monica scoffed. "I may not have figured out what you are, but I will never betray my platoon or my family."

  "I am not asking you to join us," Iggy threatened with serenity.

  "You're such a powerful being apparently, probably even omniscient, but you say stupid things," Monica retorted. "What if I betray you? I am a jaunter—"

  Upon apparently remembering that, Monica stopped engaging in the conversation altogether. With her bare feet on the invisible floor, she took a few steps forward as her mouth gaped further.

  "... are you trying to jaunt?" Iggy asked rhetorically.

  "Why... why can't I jaunt?"

  Iggy chuckled like a specter. Like a train arriving to a station in hell. "I don't mind explaining all my powers to you. In fact, there's nothing you could do to me. However, you seem to have no interest in getting to know me."

  "Of course I don't!" Monica yelled. "I have no interest in getting to know an illegal spic."

  Iggy laughed. "You know, even as a mortal that word had no effect on me. So I guess you want to extend your time in purgatory?"

  Is that really true Yggdrasilland?

  Whether it was Spiderland or his voice... Iggy was not sure.

  "Do your worst... horseman of the Apocalypse."

  "I am curious as to when and where you learned that slur," Iggy said. "Let's go to that memory shall we?"

  And in an instant, the eternal grid loaded... the flying city of Ember. Nearby the crimson and midair military base that recruited children from outside the city, snuggly and conveniently between earthplexus data centers and condos that hid the base from view, was a popular date venue for the wealthy. Notably being the only building in the flying platform to have one floor, the white and red retro diner truly stood out.

  Even two centuries later, white people looove this kind of restaurant, Iggy said from somewhere in the sky.

  A sixteen-year-old Monica loaded at one of the corner booth seats with windows on both sides of the corner. Subsequently, her date loaded on the opposite side of her as he sipped from a strawberry milkshake. His mouth, while resting on the straw, loaded first along with his pale skin and scar that stretched from there to the bridge of his small round nose, and he kept the scar for show especially since a flux medic could easily remove it.

  Jake 'Qubit' Riley, outside of the cadets in the platoon, was the only one platoon member that would still wear his uniform during the job and much of his time outside of the job, while the younger Monica kept it simple but charming with a satin slip skirt.

  "Why did you say that... word?" the younger Monica asked, the one that had escaped the black cube loading and standing on the checkered floor a meter away from her.

  Jake shrugged at her with a dumb smile. "Are you offended?"

  Teenage Monica sipped from her whipped hot chocolate before responding. "I feel like I should be."

  With him you feel comfortable being honest huh? In front of other people you would have feigned offense. Or perhaps you only wanted him to think you were cool?

  Older Monica was too busy observing herself to respond to the sky.

  "Well, it's over. We won," Jake said.

  "Did we?" Monica asked. "We had to run away from the Alkrezians—"

  Jake slammed the table, a splash of hot chocolate landing on younger Monica's skirt. She pretended as if she did not get burned from it.

  "We did not run away from them!" he yelled.

  Iggy laughed earthwards. You were about to leave out climate change as a reason the denizens ran away... but you still don't accept that as fact do you? Or perhaps you pretend to not accept it? There's no such thing as an honest conservative after all... well except when they are joking,

  Younger Monica was frozen.

  The rest of diners at the restaurant that loaded during the conversation stopped for a moment to gawk at Jake. They quickly shifted away their glances when he met theirs.

  "Why are looking at me like that?" Jake asked younger Monica with false calmness.

  "You're right... I must have heard it from fake news somewhere," Monica murmured.

  Why did you like him so much?

  Older Monica clenched her fists and glared at the diner's roof. "I DID NOT LIKE HIM!"

  Jake, for the second time this memory loaded, showed a fracture in his stoic demeanor. "Uhm... I did invite you in the hopes... for you know... but there's another reason I wanted you to come with me."

  Younger Monica, while gripping her knees under the table, manage to smile at him. "Yea?"

  "Yea, haha," Jake said. "One platoon is looking for a jaunter. I can help you become one—"

  "That's impossible," Monica interrupted. "You either are a jaunter or you're not."

  "Well... and you can't tell anyone about this," Jake said. "I'll die if this family ability of ours gets out there in the public. How about we go to the park after this?"

  And this is how... this all began, Iggy said.

  While this loaded scene came to an end, the flying platform, Jake, and the diner turned into digital dust. Now all that remained, while tears ran down Monica's cheeks, was her, the undead centaur, and the eternal grid that stretched for eternity in each direction.

  Iggy was kind enough to give her a minute of silence until he said...

  "We are not done yet Primetime."