Love, Hate and 69 [Ch. IX, Nine] - Part I

Quote of the Day: “Y’know what’s the craziest thing of all? The fact that stuff exists.” - Frocock Dampuss

T-0 : I know what you are thinking, Jesse - I am sorry for not recording anything on you yesterday, but I am in a very precarious position right now - so, let me please use you as a reference note to map the dimensions of this cave system.

T-192 : Red sandstone, wall at the back, two distinct paths meeting acutely at ~7π/30 , average cave height = ~3.14159 m, flashlight-initial : ~42.069 lm & ~1.61803 W, ∠descent = ~679574π/500000. Go left.

T-361 : Strange minerals with shapes dependent on perspective and direction of light. At ∠y = 0, ∠z = π/6, a stalactite resembled a dihectapentacontahexagon, at ∠y = 0, ∠z = π/3, the same resembled a hecatoicosioctagon, at ∠y = 0, ∠z = 2π/3, it resembled a hexacontatetragon, at ∠y = 0, ∠z = 4π/3, it resembled a tricontadigon - and many more depending on the ∠incidence, and the constant axis. It also seemed to bend light in on itself and scatter it in the most peculiar directions. Thousands like these scattered everywhere, wish I could study them more - but no time. Covered ~3.3598856 km with Field-enhanced motion, relatively uniform ∠descent as T-192, sudden decrease in ∠descent after this point, current ∠descent = ~π/137, H-cave = ~6.28318 m, flashlight-now = ~41.245 lm & 1.60669 W.

T-527: Red sandstone, wall, another path at a reflex angle of ~53π/30, average cave height = ~3.14159 m, ∠descent changes back to ~67957π/4500000, I am back to point zero from the same direction I went. I am sure I went 6.2831853 km in a straight line towards the left from point zero. This is the ninth time it happened. Futile.

Jesse, you know me - you know that I am not the kind of person who needs to note down his observations to keep a check on his experiments - my short term memory is enough for that. But, after I repeated the same experiment eight times and got the same impossible observations - I lost trust in my mental faculties and so I used you to record the observations of the ninth experiment, and it seems that my mental faculties are more precise than ever, it’s just that Physics… is not behaving itself.

I have no idea where I am nor about what I am supposed to do, so, Jesse, let me tell you how I got here.

The last thing I knew before ending up all alone in this cave is that the Grim Reaper, the physical manifestation of Death, appeared in the form of an adorable baby in the middle of the (Reconvened) 69th Universal Conference of the League of Life - and got attacked by the Halcyon Council, for reasons unknown.

But, I cannot remember what happened after that… No matter how hard I try. The next thing I remember is a dark abyss of black cards and a chilling red aura amplifying the angst in the ambience. Then I heard the voice of a woman - weeping. There was no source of light nearby, so I focussed hard on the mental image of a flashlight and created one. I turned it on and pointed it toward where the sound seemed to originate from. A rather tall woman with a rather dishevelled, neck-length hair and a rather large nose-ring was glaring at me with a rather amused expression with signs of seething sorrow. Her facial features were freckled by the surrounding darkness, and her red gown seemed to fade into the void.

“Hello,” I said, expressing my concern and curiosity, “What happened, why are you crying? What is this place? Who are you?”

“O you male child, it is futile to tell you - you will never understand me,” She walked towards me, as her tears flowed by a newly-formed feral smile, “This is the World of Cards, and standing before you is its God. I am the First Agent, Hatred.”

I was startled.

Although I was aware of her existence, I had never seen or read a single reference to her in the last ten years. Her whereabouts were supposedly unknown, and the only known picture of her was taken in 1969, exactly 50 years and 3 days ago.

“And I presume…” She said as she slowly walked up to me. She then held my chin. And then stared at me, as if looking at my very core - before saying, “You are Love, the Last Agent - and my antithesis.”

I could feel the suppressed ire in her breath, the damped outrage on her trembling fingers, and the covert loathing in her convulsing facial expressions.

A bit scared, I said, “Yes, I am Nine - and Love is probably what I represent. But… uh, where is everyone else…? Where is the HQ? And where is Death? And what do you mean by your World of Cards?”

She replied, “Think about yourself, kid.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

The very next moment I realised what she meant.

The dark abyss of cards enveloping us disintegrated into fragments, revealing the starry sky. The Milky Way winked at me along with thousands of scintillating strips of sparkling stars seemingly glittering the velvet sky.

You know, Jesse, the marvel of the night sky makes me forget everything else in the world in its brilliant grandeur. The same happened this time too - so much so that it completely escaped my mind that the embodiment of the worst human emotion was standing right by me.

It looked like someone was tearing apart a carpet from the middle. The sparkling wrapping paper of stars burned out from the middle. The stars extinguished and the constellations faded away. Soon, all that was left was but a black carpet - all the gleeful glitter had been mopped up.

I heard laughter, like that of an anime villain. I turned around to see One standing in front of a throne of cards, laughing lambastically.

She shouted in her maniacal frenzy, “Death has engulfed the world, stars have fallen from the sky, and chaos breeds in abundance - Soon! Soon, it will all be over! This world will end, then another one, another, another and another - till I end all existence, till I end him, TILL I BUTCHER EVERY MAN, BLAST THEIR ORGANS AND MAKE THEM SWALLOW THEIR OWN ENTRAILS… LIKE-LIKE…”

Suddenly, she stuttered in medias res.

Her skin seethed in sorrow, her hands hammered her head, her face fretted in frenzy, her lacerated lips lamented in lust, her irises immersed in ire - and her tears tore her torrid façade as her heart hollowed out in a howl.

“LIKE-” She sniffed as she yelled, “LIKE-LIKE THAT M-M-” Her feet gave in to the weight of her emotions, “Like… Like… Like that man…” She ended it with a whisper, “Like that man did to me…”

Her hands held her head, unable to undulate her uncontrollable tears as she lunged into laughter.

All I could do was to just look at her, feeling empathy and repulsion at the same time. You know, Jesse, I am not good at socially awkward situations - especially not with traumatised psychopaths. But then, I was suddenly joined by another socially awkward person that you know and love.

A green greyline appeared in the horizon of the abyss, and hammered away the grandstanding darkness, re-revealing the sparkling stars - seemingly brighter than before.

Then the man came into view and waved his hands. His entrance left a trail of galavanting cards flying in the air as the winds threw me off the ground even after I tried to reinforce my feet with the Field. The image of the man far away flickered and reappeared right in front of me, extending his hands towards me. He said, “Io am so sorry, Nine!”

Grabbing his hand and getting up, I replied, “It’s nice to finally see a friendly face, Two.”

One, bestially bamboozled by the beckoning of her bodily-begotten son, stopped laughing. She stood up from her stupor. She stared at Two, dead in the eye, and started walking towards us.

I was about to say something when Two raised his hands, signalling me to be silent. Anxious, I stood silently as One slowly slid towards us.

Two whispered, “Mamma…”

One approached him, looked dead in the eye, and embraced him - murmuring, “Figlio mio… You are the only person in this world I have ever cared about…”

He held her and smiled slightly, with a single tear forming in his left eye, “Stop mamma…” He whispered, “Stop this madness… I will never know your suffering, mamma, but I can feel it… I know you are hurt, mamma, we understand your pain, your suffering and your hardships - you don’t need to hurt others to make the world understand your pain… Stop g- I love you.”

“Stop…” She looked up at him, “Stop, you say? For you and only you - I can’t stop.”

“Why,” The tear dropped to the ground as Two said, “Why,
mamma?”

She replied, smiling faintly, “I have sold my soul to the Devil - to crush that abomination.”

It was as astonishing as the time I was able to breathe in space without a spacesuit - somehow. Jesse, do you have any idea how I did that? Because I definitely do not.

Two said, faintly, “What do you mean,
mamma?”

The cards around us suddenly started vibrating and a strange orchestra started playing out of nowhere.

She said, “Watch it yourselves.”

The cards surrounded us and formed a large sphere with a diameter of ~97.267 metres. The black cards became smaller and smaller till they resembled a 32K theatre screen. One, Two and I were suspended mid-air in a cricket stadium-sized sphere of cards… That’s not a sentence that I’d ever thought that I’d write, but here we are, Jesse.

In an instant, grandiose images were illuminated in the apparated screen. Microcosms of light, like that image of the Cosmic Microwave Background, surrounded two figures at the centre. A hooded figure, with a scythe hanging in its back, stood in front of a bowing blonde lady in a blood-red gown. The slowly rising orchestral music reminded me of a theremin but with the calmness of a flute, as the scythed figure slowly approached the woman. She looked up and said, “Great Grim Reaper, I’ve come to bargain.”

The figure replied in the most gruesome voice, “You’ve come to die. Your soul is now mine, like all souls.”

In the very next instant, she was barraged by hundreds of thousands of pointed shards as she hopelessly uses the Field and tries to defend against them all - before she is finally blasted away into oblivion by a gamma ray burst from Death’s scythe.

Then she looked up and said, “Great Grim Reaper, I’ve come to bargain.”

The figure replied in the most gruesome voice imaginable, “You’ve come to die. Your soul is now mine - WAIT WHAT?” Death hesitated, as its hood fell off and a pure black face took its place. The light surrounding Death’s Domain shook as it growled, “WHAT IS THIS ILLUSION?”

One replied, smiling smugly, “No, this is real.”

“Good,” Death replied as pristine shards pierced One. Then she looked up and said, “Great Grim Reaper, I’ve come to bargain.”

The figure replied, once again, gruesomely, “You - WAIT, WHAT IS HAPPENING?”

She replied, standing up as if nothing happened, “Just as you control Death, the End of All, so do I control its Beginning. This is Hatred, the Beginning of the End - endless, eternal Hatred, looping you forever in this instant.”

Death howled, “YOU DARE-” as it chopped off her head with its scythe. Then she said, “Great Grim Reaper, I’ve come to bargain.”

Death muttered, “You cannot do this forever…”

She replied, “Actually, I can. This is how things are now - you and me, trapped in this moment for eternity.”

Death replied, “Then you will spend eternity - DYING!”

Lasers, shards, asteroids, blades, wind blades, bullets, nukes, whirling swords and whirlpools killed her 1863 times. Every time she said, “Bargain-” and every time Death yelled, “JUST DIE ALREADY-” only to butcher her to death and then to end up again with her pleading for a bargain.

After brutally killing her 1863 times, Death gasped in exasperation and yelled, “You will NEVER WIN!”

She replied, “But I can lose again and again and again - and that makes you my prisoner.”

Death damned her, “But you will SUFFER!”

She smirked as she said, “Pain is an old friend.”

“STOP THIS, PLEASE,” Death pleaded.

“As I've told you,” She smiled smugly as she said, “I have come to bargain, O Great Grim Reaper!”

Death demanded, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”

One's smug smile metamorphosed into a pure psychotic grin - before she solemnly said, “The End of All.”

Death replied with a question, “And what do I get in return?”

“My soul.”

“Huh,” Death laughed, “You want the end of all existence in return for a measly soul?”

“My soul is Infinite.”

“H-Huh?” Death stuttered, “What do you mean by that?”

The psychotic smile turned into a psychopathic laughter.

“Do you-” Death stammered, “Do y-you realise what you are ta-talking about?”

“HOHO- HA! Of course!” Hatred gallivanted around Death, apparently teasing It, “A portion of the Infinite for the end of a part of It, not a bad deal - is it?”

“Do not laugh as if these are t-trivial matters!” Death admonished her, “What kind of Infinite are you referring to? The Unary, the Binary, the Tertiary or the Quadrilateral?”

She replied coldly, “I was told it is the Quadrilateral by a certain man who proclaims that he never lies. I wouldn’t have bothered you if It were an inferior Infinite, although I know you are but a Tertiary Infinite Being.”

The Great Grim Reaper trembled as It couldn’t believe what It was hearing. It said, “Are you j-jesting with me?”

“Why, no,” She replied, “Here, watch my soul - and see if you can see it.”

Death was about to say something when - all of a sudden - the sagacious screen of eensy-weensy cards crumpled in on itself, as a grey glare gashed through the ghostly glow. A not-so-strange Arab man made his way to 2.7 centimetres in front of Hatred’s font of fear within 34 milliseconds - only to be stopped dead in his tracks by one of One’s fingernails.

You know me, Jesse, you know I detest exaggeration and try to be as accurate and precise as I can be in everything I do. But, it seems that, unconsciously, I am trying to be more precise than ever in this entry. The details might bore you, but, trust me when I say it - you will understand where I am coming from within a few sentences.

“Fakir says,” Fakir said as he staggered back, “That Holmes just told you to stop.”

Suddenly I felt a buzz tingling in my head, before I heard Two scream in my mind, “Did you see that?!”

The very next millisecond, a shockwave of magnitudes way beyond nonillions of quettajoules hit me. Every single quark in my body should have been quantised and my body should have been converted into pure electromagnetic radiation at that proximity. But, as you can see - or perhaps, read - Jesse, I am still alive - and I still have no idea how.

Somehow, I was only knocked unconscious by that galaxy-destroying blast. And when I came to, I found myself in this absurd cavern - as if none of that even happened. I spent the last 19 hours, 21 minutes and 36 seconds mulling over -

Wait, what’s that noise? Wait for me, Jesse, I need to investigate - this is the first time I have heard a discernible sound since I came to.

____________

T-???: Thanks for waiting for me, Jesse - it’s been a long day - or maybe a hundred. For the first time in my short life, I don't know how much time passed between two events - while I was conscious. And no, Jesse, I am not even talking about relativistic time - I am talking about local time. I am finally in my room with Six sleeping in her bed, smiling in her dreams - perhaps assured that there will be a tomorrow when she wakes up. I am not completely certain about that, but let’s talk about that later.

I rose up from the obtuse stalagmite that I sat on - to search for the source of that strange sound. It was a strange groan. It was as if a zebra was talking with a komodo dragon. If you remember, the cave there was divided into two different parts - and I couldn’t figure out the direction of the source. I tried really hard, but even then, I couldn’t say for certain. I thought my head was going haywire due to hunger and that the constant reverberation had dulled my senses - I have a different hypothesis for that now, however.

I went to the right this time. The groan was constant yet fluctuating, afraid yet endearing. I looked ahead and went straight. I walked. And walked. And walked. Then I flew. I flew. And I flew - yet, there was no sign of the source of the noise, I was just running around in circles despite going as straight as a laser. I looked around everywhere, but found nothing. I gave up and sat down on that stalagmite again after exactly 19 hours and 17 minutes - I was exhausted.

Then I heard my stomach hoarsely groan, as if harmonising with the constant groaning. I made a salad sandwich and ate it. I wondered how everyone else was doing. Then, I sensed a faint glint grossly graze my right eye. I turned around towards that flash and spotted a grey matte sheen rapidly pulsating in the air. Curious, I went close to it. At first, it was a pink off-centred cross-section of a solid ellipse - one step and it became a 3-D corner of the shadow of a hypercube. From an angle, it looked like a bright fretting fidget spinner. From another angle, it looked like an ink splotch from a blue fountain pen. With each of my movements, the thing metamorphosed into something completely different.

At that moment, I realised that the strange groan also changed its amplitude and frequency whenever I moved. The range of the sound kept changing from that of a theremin to that of a falling pen or a ruffling scarf or an intermob notification and countless more. Thus, I hypothesised that the eerie noise was being made by that constantly transforming… whatever-that-is. Using the Field, I amplified the intensity of my flashlight to get a proper look at it - and that only made it worse.

Now, many different little chasms of crayon colours clamped in capricious corners started creating sounds throughout the audible spectrum. Taken aback by the sudden explosion of sound and light, I slipped and lost my balance on one of the limestone stalagmites - but somehow, I didn’t fall. Just then, I heard a strange noise that somehow sounded like a child sighing in relief.

I stood up on my feet and turned around to look at the… thing. But the thing is, the thing… transformed into several strange shapes that slowly started to resemble a humanoid figure - which seemed to be smiling at me.

“Wha-” I stuttered, “What - Who are you?”

I’d forgotten that not everyone in existence speaks English - no matter what the MCU directors think.

The figure looked somewhat perplexed and unsure. It tried to open its half-formed mouth but no sound came out of it. Its still forming figure convulsed in confusion, its clots clattering, as if begging for clemency.

“Oh,” I had just remembered that there is more than one language in the world, and said, “Wait.”

It took me a couple of seconds to remember the blueprint of the Universal Translator, it's been a while since I invented it - 2 years, 2 months, 16 days, 16 minutes and 9 seconds to be exact. I still remember Two talking about intergalactic miscommunication due to mistranslation - and how some galaxies were still mad because Zero had declared English and Latin as the official languages of the supercluster just because he thought, “Leo would have found these
linguae pretty cool.”

Oh, wait, you should already know all about it - after all, Two gifted you to me after I showed him its first prototype. I have no idea how I forget stuff like this but still remember that 69420 first appears after the 15773rd digit in the decimal approximation of π - I am weird, Jesse.

It seemed like I was getting better at using the Field - as the Translator appeared the moment I thought about it. And for some reason, the proto-humanoid figure seemed to grow in size just after the Translator manifested itself. Its disconcerted matte shrapnels became denser and more numerous as it slowly manifested in a true human body. I tried to use the Field to calibrate the Translator with its consciousness - and that made its appearance even clearer with short hair, dark skin, large eyes, childish demeanour and short stance. It had transformed into a little boy of six.

The Translator couldn't be calibrated for some reason (I later understood why), but an idea ignited in my cerebral cortex.

“Wait,” A thought untacitly tickled my troubled head, “Is the manifestation of this… uh… being directly proportional to the flux of the Dark Field?”

I had just realised that - since the thing first appeared, its appearance and effects have only changed whenever I used the Field to do something. For example, it appeared after I used the Field to make a sandwich, it transformed a lot when I used the Field to amplify my flashlight and it also changed drastically when I summoned the Translator.

As you know (or at least should know, you are my diary, after all), Jesse, the unperturbed Dark Field is like a liquid in laminar flow - hence, its other name, the Dark Fluid. Existence (it's a bit more complicated than that - you can check out my latest thesis to know more) is but turbulence created in this Field, similar to the concept of ether. However, objects created or affected by Field Wielders are a bit different - they are predictable turbulences in the Field that can be calculated by the specialised Da Vinci version of the Navier - Stokes Equation.

Now, Jesse, you might ask - what has that got to do with anything? Hear me out before judging - all of this went through my head in a jiffy (it’s a unit of time, not an exaggeration, Jesse!) and I didn’t think this through before writing - but still, hear me out. As you know, Jesse, to make any turbulence predictable, we have to feed it information, i.e., we have to use some sort of external force and energy to get some work done. In simpler words, we have to give information to gain information.

At the moment I had that thought, I hypothesised that - whenever I wielded the Field to do something, the being fed on that information and used it to manifest itself - and damn, it feels great when your hypothesis is proven to be perfect.

I tried to make a pair of Field Yielder Goggles to view the flow of the Dark Field. And as soon as they appeared in my hands, a cap grew on top of the little boy’s head - providing further observational evidence to my hypothesis before I even put on the goggles.

I put on the goggles and I couldn't believe my eyes - the Field Density was off the charts. No, literally, Jesse, I am not exaggerating! The goggles couldn't even render anything - it's usually a shallow purple tinge around regular matter and pale white around Field-created objects, but this time, it was all bright white. I even took off the goggles to check if it was functioning properly, and found no problem with it. At that moment, another idea popped in my head.

“Wait,” I thought aloud, “Don't tell me… This entire cave…”

I turned around to look at the creature and asked, “What are you?”

The little boy looked at me and my confused face and got confused himself. Then a spark appeared in his eyes and he waved his hand at me - and I had no idea why he did that.

Apparently comprehending my continued confusion, the cute boy acutely charged up the index finger of his right hand - and started to count.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

And it stopped, and started waving his hand again. Wait, was his previous waving gesture supposed to represent the number five? That… makes sense, so stupid of me. But what does five mean?

After seeing understanding and confusion backhand each other in my face, the boy stopped waving, thought for a bit and started waving again but pointing the index finger of his other hand towards himself. Wait, five… himself?

My first thought was Agent Five, but that was quickly ruled out because of his behaviour (Five laughs all the time and I am not even exaggerating) and the fact that he doesn't understand English. What else is related to “Five” that I know of…? The Five Fundamental Forces of Nature… Five Little Fairies… Five Nights at Freddy’s… Five-Factor Model… Five Elements… Five… Wait a minute -

“5D - Five Dimensions? Five-dimensional beings? Is that it?!” I yelled in realisation. I looked around haphazardly - the cave, the being, the abnormal Physics, the weird reflections and refractions, the calibration error, the loops made by straight paths - it all makes sense now! I looked towards the little boy and bombarded him with questions, forgetting about his inability to understand English in the ecstasy of excitement, “Are you a 5D creature? Is this a 5D world? What is this cave? Who are you?”

As if answering my impudence, the cave began to shake violently all of a sudden. I almost fell down on a pointed stalagmite but somehow managed to get back on my feet. After getting a shelter behind a rather obtuse row of stalactite columns, I couldn’t help but murmur, “Ah yes… sudden plot device after completion of a character development arc… isn’t it great that life is such a cliché?”

As if answering my repugnance, a song began to play - a song that I am all too familiar with… sung by the sweetest voice that’s always around me.

“As if answering my pen, the paper bleeds in blue blots,”

The ambience abruptly alternated amongst abyssal angst and anarchy.

“Blabbering away among behemoth clots,”

The boundaries of the backdrop bellowed as it broke down into benign banded belts of bottomless blackness.

“Clattering clemently with dilapidated dots,”

The creature clamoured around the cave as it was calorised into catenated chains of cavernous celeries.

“Dreaming of life and death.”

Drums dragged up the dainty droll, drowning out the dream-drawn Dali-like cadence of the rhythm.

“Each element of felony fains behind a farce,”

Emeralds emblazoned with embittered fury etch eccentric engraving in the ether as an exclamation of an excited Fury edges past my ears.

“Forcing gashes to gloom behind grass glass-”

Flaming Fury, my favourite friend, flashed fast past me. Freckled Frocock flanked her, fretting around in free space following whom was fuming Fakir with flailed ears.

“Grammar guarding hordes of harsh”

Galavanting across galaxies gigaparsecs apart while gaitily grimacing in a graceful gait were gaudy Glee and grim Gloom as they glided around a growling not-so-gentlewoman.

“Haters holding false fate.”

Hatred hammered away at Hachi-kun, holding hammerhead hames, and Hitler, his halation hewing from humongous Hoag's object-sized to hobbit-sized. Hellenic, hazy, haphazard hiemal hands of the himation-adorned Crazy Consumnate Cultist harangued and harassed Hatred.

“Inching incrementally into imminent doom,”

Inuring the Immortal Imperator of Imps, incarcerating the Invincible Incinerator, insulting the Innovative Inkster, irritating the Indomitable Islander and imprecating the Ingenious Indian - the infinitely ired inimica immaculately incapacitated intrepid and immense inimici instantaneously. Inebriated with immeasurable indignation, Hatred impugned with incessant impatience. I investigated every inch of this imploding impasse for the creature when-

“Jettisoning off with jailed mushrooms,”

Jostling and jolting me with a jerk, the little juvenile jumped upon my shoulder joints, as if jacking up a jeep for a jocund jaunt. Juggling the little jester, I jousted into the jimmering jank of jalebi-like helix of pure chaos.

“Keeping away the killers of the bridegroom - kaboom! - ”

Kindness knocked me away from Thena’s Killer Smash that was about to kaplomb through my knee.

“Lamenting the lost love of late.”

Like lightning, lanceolate luminescence lacerated lambently through my ocular lens, lopsidedly, up to the conjunctival lympathic lacunae - somehow. Looking around, I saw Lady Liberty launch past me - as if languidly leaping from a ladder in pure vacuum. Even in a complete lack of air, I could lamprophonically listen her lightly lambast Salai, “By the loins of Leonardo da Vinci, this lunatic, lallating lass is all your fault - SALAI!”

I know what you are thinking, Jesse - I am being a bit poetic while narrating the events that occurred while my first song played in the background some yet-to-be-known reason - but eh, it would be fun to flex my writing skills to Six if she ever starts writing a diary (*Foreshadowing Intensifies*). Also, you might think I am using a lot of fancy words, idioms and metaphors for this alphabetical endeavour - but believe me when I say, I am not exaggerating even by a unit Planck length - rather, I am probably downplaying several events because of my inability to concentrate on everything, everywhere, all at once while coming out of a 5D cave with a 5D creature straight into a fight involving eight of the Ten Agents, several League of Life ambassadors and every 3-L Three except Sherlock.

Also, about Sherlock…

“Mangoes melt away in a million-”

My music that was (for some reason) playing in the background in a vacuum went mute all of a sudden - as if the conductor of the orchestra dropped his baton mid-performance, the vocalist went mum and the musicians muffled their instruments.

I looked around, trying to understand the cause of the sudden silence - and saw that all was dark and still, as if the abyss had engulfed everything. Or less poignantly, someone just turned off the lights and switched off the boombox. All the stars in space stopped twinkling, all the lights constantly zapping around ceased to be.

I tried to discern the minimal electromagnetic frequencies around me using the Field Goggles, to know what was going on - and I realised something terrible. Everything in the universe has gone perfectly still - there are no perturbations in the Field.

“Wait a minute,” I murmured to myself, “Zero perturbations in the Field…? That… shouldn’t be possible! At least the little quantum jiggling [yes, that’s the technical term for that, Jesse, read my latest thesis if you don’t believe me - yes, it’s silly, but I discovered it so I can name it whatever I want!] in the Field should be detectable - and yet…!”

At that moment, I realised another thing.

I thought, “No, wait, something is wrong… My thoughts, my little murmurings and everything else that I do should produce some fluctuation in the Field… after all, thoughts are but electric impulses transmitted through synaptic connections… There should be some electromagnetic reading in the Field… But still, I can sense nothing! What is even happening?”

I frantically went through every bit of knowledge that I possess in my cerebrum to even grasp at what’s happening - or more accurately, why nothing is happening. Everything in my head was a blur, a jumble of equations and symbols raced through my mind. Then I thought of trying to get some help from someone, so I frantically tried to move. I threw hands and jerked my head around but every time I moved, I saw strange white flashes.

I was confused, even more confused than the time in the 5D cave. I can’t even sense the 5D creature right now. Nothing made any sense to me. I tried to manipulate the Field and extract some, even if it’s negligible, information from it - but there were literally zero perturbations in the Field. I tried to use the Drive to return to Earth - it did not work. I tried to create a flashlight - it did not work. I remembered Chapter 154, Page 69 of “I am Kinda Bored” to try to use telepathy to connect with anyone - it still did not work. I was baffled.

“Alright,” I told myself, breathing heavily - still having no idea how I am breathing in the vacuum of space but nevertheless - “Calm down, Nine, calm down. Relax. Think. Go down to the basics. It’s simple maths. There is zero quantum jiggling, that means - δQ times dt equals zero… That shouldn’t even be theoretically possible as δQ times dt is always greater than or equal to h/2π according to Heisenberg - but here we are… What does that mean…? δQ… Q… The Quotient of Existence… That should never be zero as long as anything exists… Does anything exist at the moment? Don’t be stupid, Nine, of course everything exists. At the very least - cogito, ergo sum - I think, therefore I am - Even if you are uncertain about the existence of anything else, you exist and that’s enough. Thus, Q cannot be zero… Then… dt… Change in time… Time…”

Realisation struck me like lightning and I could feel a shiver go down my stupid spine. I yell to myself, “OF COURSE, YOU IDIOT, TIME HAS STOPPED!”

I smacked my forehead for not realising this earlier. Most depictions of time stopping in anime, or fiction in general, do not account for the cessation of light and sound and every other sense - guess that’s why it didn’t strike me earlier. Also, that perfectly accounts for the bright flashes of light everytime I moved even a little bit - as photons hit my retina, even though I didn’t really see anything in general. That also explains why the Drive is not working or why the Field cannot create objects - spacetime, or rather, existence itself is in suspension.

Now that I knew what was going on, I had to know the how and why of it - because that’s how science works. And I didn’t need any second guesses this time - my intuition told me it was Sherlock Holmes, and that was confirmed in 2 seconds (at least, in my perspective, because time was stopped throughout the universe).

All of a sudden, squeaking through the abyss, I saw a green light race towards me. I tried to check the Field for perturbations but I still couldn’t sense any. The emerald light came closer and closer to me till I could see a Webley RIC on my forehead faintly in the virescent glow. The finger had almost pressed the trigger when I yelled amidst the abyssal vacuum, “What are you doing, Sherlock?!”

But it was too late. Six .50 bullets were already deep in the corpus callosum.

Continued in Nine, Ch. IX, Part II