RESETS: 42

  Towards the sky—

  There he is!

  I see him!

  Thereupon Iker crossed his forearms above his countenance while booms, screams, and smoke enveloped him. The downward jump kick from the descending supersoldier could have been a deciding blow, but Iker's now timeless experience did not allow even a piece of fabric to be torn from his black hoodie. Since tapping into that unconscious experience, it also trivialized the fight between him and the two supersoldiers that were surprisingly in pursuit of Iker rather than Camilo.

  While being able to read their last names as Hans and Rhodes, Iker also broke all four of their limbs clean amidst the nascent chaos.

  "Do me a solid and stay still," Iker said to them as they cursed slurs at their immediate defeat. "I want to avoid killing either of you."

  "WHERE IS CAMILO?"

  "GIRL WHAT THE FUCK? THERE'S A DEAD DOG ON THE GROUND."

  "That guy... is he... is he. Oh my God what's coming out of his stomach?"

  "Just fucking leave already!"

  Across dwindling smoke pushed by the fleeing and screaming crowd, Camilo had already taken on multiple forms. His facial features, and eventually his vellus hair, height, and posture were changing like menu options rather than like swimming flesh. Camilo as a homo erectus was swept up by further crowd waves.

  Shit.

  Before he could pursue Camilo, a white hand clasped Iker's shoulder. Almost crushing the shoulder, Iker jabbed the rogue wrist behind him. Upon being free Iker dashed forwards, performing a half u-turn while digging both of his sneakers and his wooden arm into the sod to a full stop.

  "Shut the fuck up!" Qubit in civilian clothes yelled, kicking the chin-crawling Hans and Rhodes into the nearby large crate. "You two already lost. I don't give a damn about helping fucking losers."

  Qubit famously wore his uniform out of duty hours, but today his bright green crewneck would suggest he was going to a party rather than trying to capture Iker. Upon the teenage supersoldiers Hans and Rhodes forcing themselves to keep their pain to themselves, Qubit scanned his dress shoes before staring back at Iker.

  "Where's Monica?" Qubit asked Iker.

  RESETS: 5

  Unending and cloudless skies were beyond every direction, yet an imperceptible floor kept Iggy and Monica from falling.

  "I realized what made this floor so uncomfortable," Monica finally said. "I can't feel the gravity like I would on Earth... yet if I jump it pulls me right back down. It makes me not feel real. Also I have yet to feel all of the distance we walked together... if you could say we walked distances."

  "In a way... we are not real," Iggy said, his voice echoing across the plane.

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  "Yea I get it," Monica admonished. "Heaven, hell...and reality are all simulations. So we are not real at all right? What kind of quantum computer do we exist in?"

  "We do not exist in a computer," Iggy explained. "Well, let me expand on that further. Some realities we come across do exist in a computer, but what governs all of our realities, virtual and non-virtual, is not a computer."

  "Huh?" Monica asked.

  "We are inside a human mind," Iggy replied. "More specifically, we are inside a story."

  Longer than the pause that had taken place when the pair had arrived to this particular plane, Monica had to take another one, and Iggy the undead centaur took it with her. In the prior trip through memory lane, Iggy had explained to her that wind brushing her shoulder again came from an ambient asset that was left behind by God, and now Monica would have figured out that in this case the capital G god would be the author himself.

  "I feel like the Bible... or all the religious books were saying this too... but it got lost in translation with all the powerful men that wanted to use it for evil," Monica said. "Adding and changing the anti-woman and anti-gay stuff."

  "What do you mean?" Iggy asked.

  "Weren't those stories just old science fiction? Before people knew what space was?" Monica asked. "Cosmic horror would not have been four-dimensional aliens or broken physics back then... but rather the mystery in the mountains. The lightning in the sky. Volcanic eruptions. Now that we understand how it all works, it can no longer be cosmic horror. Those religious stories were not factual stories, but just cosmic horror for ancient people."

  "As a mortal I did believe religion was the problem, until I read those stories like literature," Iggy added. "When I came upon the realizations you did, I also realized that religion was not the problem. It was malicious and bad media literacy. Like those catholic priests and royal families abused the media literacy of the people back then, billionaires in the existing one's reality are doing the same thing again."

  "Are you referring to the author?" Monica asked. "Who is he? Why would he let us find out we were in a story? Is he not scared people will think he is psychotic?"

  Iggy laughed, taking his time to respond. "In times of relative peace, science fiction has to warn the world, but in times of turmoil science fiction has to be sincere. Ultimately all of them take place in a human mind. Even in the hardest science fiction story, a capital G god exists in it, the four-dimensional human imagining it. That is the truth."

  Iggy stopped again before finishing his homily. "All those dystopian and cyberpunk books that warned of the future is now the present. Well, in a way, it has always been happening, but you will see that for yourself Monica. The question is... now that it is here... what are we going to do about it?"

  RESETS: 42

  "Who are you?" Qubit asked.

  "I'll only exchange information with you if you are willing to do the same," Iker replied. "One to one."

  "Sure," Qubit said with a shrug. If Iker remembered correctly, it was Hans that was the one with light brown hair and facing away. He whimpered ever so softly, and it got Qubit to walk towards him. Hans must have heard his footsteps because Hans stopped immediately.

  "I am Iker. I am a fourteen year old guy."

  Qubit chuckled. "Nice try. Now tell me who you really are."

  "What do you mean?" Iker asked.

  Qubit's false lighthearted demeanor vanished, a dark frown befalling his scarred face. "Ember sent me after you. Now tell me who you really are."

  RESETS: 5

  On purpose, Iggy kept the spawning of the Cyclopean discreet. He had become the sky itself when his undead avatar had vanished.

  "Isn't the word cyclopean used to describe something?" Monica asked.

  Indeed, Iggy said from above. However, its ancient name had been lost to time.

  A faded and vertical hieroglyphic eye manifested in front of Monica, causing her to take a few steps back. The eye's translucent nature ceased when effulging limestone filled its dimensions like melted gold in a glass chalice. Within what would be the white of the eye instead had anomalous brain matter and metal spawning into it like a deeply fastidious 3D design. Neurons biologically edited to its pinnacle, and chips with perfect labyrinths embossed into the most minuscule layer of quantum reality weaved together to cover each other's weaknesses. Whether they were the roots of cosmic trees, the neurons of the author, veins of an elder god, or bolts of lightning tearing through spacetime was unknown, but these sentient and glowing zigzags brought the Cyclopean online. Its pupil that captured perfect nothingness regardless of the laws of physics rolled down to stare at Monica.

  Monica, Iggy said. Do not let the guilt bring you into despair, but Fornia will have to fall. Here is our contingency plan in that timeline.