Antiphonal whirls from fluxjumps were audible amongst the atmospheric winds, missiles, and explosions, which came as a surprise to Spiderland who was still adrift amongst night clouds lit by fired ammunition. Vis baby blue eye and pink eye brightened within the enlarged bone helmet as ve scanned the skies for the likely American flux-laden supersoldiers. With one spin above vis smoke body ve spotted the two soldiers nosediving with their pilot helmets covering their entire countenance. However, they were from an unknown country. Whether the nation spawned or came to existence through time and coincidence manipulation, there was no longer a meaningful difference. As the duo dived into the clouds, parsing them as they barely missed Spiderland's head, ve could not glean anything about them.

  Spiderland knew that the Americans came first in every reset, and ve knew every subsequent nation that would come shortly to either seize or destroy the massive computer below the town.

  Back on Earth, in the darkest area of the besieged desert, a glowing outline of a teenage boy was manifesting as the teenage Ameen slid down a dune carefully. Even with only squares of blue and black polyester spawning along with the fading and glowing artefacts of prompts and code, it was obvious that the jacket and cargo pants were baggier than necessary. The jacket had pronounced shoulders, but not enough to be pads, while the most notable aspect of the materializing pants was that they had big pockets by the ankles too.

  When the sneakers popped into existence Joaquim was flabbergasted at first at the aerial battle and the spawning fictional characters, but he could not help but notice someone around the same age going down to the depths of the rockiest part of the desert.

  In reaction to footsteps behind him, Joaquim spun around to find an extremely pale woman with half of her head missing. Her long dress was quite extraterrestrial but thoroughly black, and its entire base dragged along the sand. Any virtual distortions in her silhouette from spawning ceased to be, and she pulled out two spadeless hilts with buttons she pressed upon raising them pointing away from herself.

  Red confetti sprayed out of the hilts as an audio clip of applause played from somewhere in the air.

  "The 'tisssm is ssstrong in me!" she declared, marching towards a random direction as if she was not aware that Joaquim was standing there with a raised brow.

  Joaquim shook his head, turned, and descended into the lower dunes too. The boy Joaquim had found earlier was missing, but he could not have made it far. Once Joaquim slid past some boulders and a large limestone that was quite cubic, it became more apparent that the rock formations were no mere accidents. They were not happenstances of nature, but of something else.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  A sneaky edge caught a jogging Joaquim off guard and he began his fall into a pit. Using the momentum at first to fall in a way that was safer, he stopped adjusting himself when he spotted stories upon stories of ruins within the starlit pit. Several skyscrapers could fit into this opening of the ruins in fact, and Joaquim spotted a shadow across and below from him. Instead of accepting the fall Joaquim spotted severed columns behind and underneath him, throwing his hands and feet towards them to hopefully catch one as his fall kept picking up speed, and not only did his flux-infused fingernails catch the edge of one, but so did his flux-infused left foot. He flipped once in midair and he managed to point his feet towards the ground right before landing on what seemed to be a mural steeped in hieroglyphics. Curiosity did interrupt for half a second, but Joaquim fluxjumped immediately to where the shadow had been, slamming himself into another column on the other side of the ruin.

  Joaquim stepped back, winced, and dusted the sleeve that made contact with the column. He took glances side to side in embarrassment, shook his head, and ran into the threshold he just spotted. With the expectation of entering dark ruins, the indoor lights from technology brought fear to Joaquim, causing him to halt by digging in his sneakers into the limestone under him. Despite his heart picking up speed, he walked instead of continuing his jog. Upon a more thorough scan it became clear that the squares of light in the darkness were more thresholds, and Joaquim walked in the direction of the leftmost threshold. Realizing how loud his steps were, them echoing louder than the droplets echoing through the ruins like it was a cave, Joaquim adjusted his steps until they were much softer. Still, they were making tiny crunches, but something told Joaquim that the boy's age that was hopefully in here was no coincidence and Joaquim was not going to go any slower.

  The room Joaquim entered had red walls. The dresser, the sewing machine, and the CRT television were all from different time periods. By the base of the threshold to Joaquim's right, there was something written in black marker.

  FF0000

  The next room had blue walls, a canopy bed, and a shattered mainframe.

  0000FF

  The yellow room had a book in the center.

  FFFF00

  The white room was empty, but it had much more text and numbers written on the walls.

  Before Joaquim could examine them, the familiar cold from the edge of a barrel poked through his new clothes and onto his back.

  "Why did you follow me?" the voice asked.

  "...we're the same age aren't we?" Joaquim asked.

  "Why does that matter?" he asked.

  "It always matters," Joaquim said innocently, then releasing a nervous chuckle.

  "Are you from a book? A movie? A memory? A dream?" he asked.

  "I am from a science fiction story apparently," Joaquim answered.

  "Hmm, interesting," he said. "Are we in one? Or are we inside the mind that conceived it? How about the people reading it? Do we exist inside their heads too?"

  Joaquim did not know what to say. He gulped instead of answering.

  "My name is Ameen by the way," the voice said.

  "Who are you?"