B U G M A N

Two men in spacesuits stared at the wall where a loaded gun sat in a glass case. An emergency pick was chained to the case. The glass read, “BREAK IN CASE OF BREACH.”

“We’ve got a loop.” Said Barney to Charles.
“Goddamnit,” Charles spat.
“And,” Barney rolled his eyes, “Apparently it’s our fault.”
“How?”
Barney shrugged, “Guess we’re gonna find out. This does feel somewhat pivotal, doesn’t it? Like everything leads to this point?”
Charles nodded, unsure if his partner was being sarcastic. “Narrative scope calibration?”
They both looked at their reality-augmented wrist computers. Barney dialed something in and flashed the screen at Charles. It read, “\_/” and Charles nodded.

~*WOOOOSH*~

Is?
O barebo.
?
!

~*HSOOOOW*~

“No, can’t do peeled Charlie. Too barebones.”
“Damn.” Sometimes reducing the form doesn’t work as intended. Charles was upset, “Well that would’ve been easy. Alternative low-structure environments?”
“We could try diced?” Barney offered.
“I hate parsing but it’s worth a shot before we scale up.”
Barney showed Charles the screen on his wrist computer, it read, “///” and Charles nodded.

~*WOOOOSH*~

Dcd?
yp.
Si.
Tee i ntig hr.
To mnmls.

~*HSOOOOW*~

“Damn minimalism.” Charles shook his head.
“It has a time and a place you know…”
“Not on my bottom line.”
Barney chuckled. “Alright you old salt. Ready to scale up?"
“I guess.” Scaling up was a risky business and Charles hated risks. “Now or never?”
“You always ask me like it’s a question,” muttered Barney, plugging data into his wrist computer. The new screen read, “\|/” and Charlie nodded.

~*HSOOOOW*~

Starvation. Cold. The wind found every gap in their layers and worked tirelessly until it met bare skin. Charles felt something dig into his shoulder but there was nothing there. The snow piled around them in soft flurries and their footprints trailed off into the taiga. Barney was brooding, sitting in the snow with stiff repose.
“Everything alright?”
“Are you stupid?” Barney turned and sneered. “How could you?”
“What?” Charles tried not to sound scared. “What do you mean?"
“Oh don’t what-do-you-mean me! You klutz. That was our food, Charles! All of our fucking food.”
Charles was nervous. Barney should have known they were new to the story. He should have known they were accountable for nothing and had no familiarities. “I didn’t do it, Barney, I didn’t do it! Do you get what I’m saying?” Barney still had his suit on. He should have understood Charles, whose voice could no longer conceal his fear.
“Oh shut up.” Barney sneered, “Enough excuses from you.” He looked down at his wrist computer, studying it, scrolling up and down nonchalantly and reading the generated story-text.
“I’m scared Barney. We just scaled the story up and you’re not acting right.”
“You’re the one not acting right. Too weak to pull a simple handcart up a ravine without spilling it.”
Charles knew Barney was the problem—some minds simply break after a certain number of jobs. The chance was something like 1 in 1,000,000. Barney was gone. It was time for the gun in the glass case. Charles needed to get back there and he started to scroll up on his wrist computer, looking for the line he needed. Barney rambled, sick and distracted.

“Just because we made it to New Warsaw doesn’t mean we’re out of the shit. The land is still contaminated with spacefuel. You knew how important that food was and you spilled it anyway. You idiot. You’ve killed us, Charlie, you’ve killed us…”
Charles found the line he needed, misdirecting—“We have spacefuel but not tupperware?”
Barney scowled. “I didn’t make the world what it is. We’re maggots living in its carcass that never get to become flies.”
Charles was wary, remembering his training. He copied the command and scrolled back down, keeping Barney distracted at all costs. If Barney had time to examine the story, printing itself on both wrist computers as the events unfolded, he would learn too much. He would go crazier.

“Plus, why are we pulling a handcart? Are there no backpacks here?”
“You dolt.” Barney snorted with indignation. “People can hardly find food. The ship crash contaminated all of eastern europe and you’re worried about a backpack?” He laughed derisively, “You’re lucky you don’t have the fractal limb effect.”
“...The what?” Charles was almost at the bottom.
“Uncontrolled whole limb replication caused by the interaction of spacefuel and organic matter. Where have you been? Are we not in the same apocalypse?”
Now that Barney was curious about the inconsistency of who-knew-what, Charles struck—he hit ‘paste’.

~*WOOOOSH*~

Back in front of the gun in the glass case on the wall. Charles was inching his way closer to the gun, closer to the metal pick hanging next to the glass. If he was fast, if he could get enough range, he could do it—but Barney would put up a fight. According to the training, they always do. Reality was undone before Barney’s very eyes and he choked out, “Charles where are we?”
He looked back down at his wrist computer, eyes bulging as he watched real-time reality-to-text generated on screen. Charles dove for the pick and quickly shattered the glass box. The gun was naked on the wall. Charles reached for it.
“Don’t even think about it.” The awareness in Barney’s voice made Charles pause. Barney looked up from his wrist computer, “If you reach for that gun I’ll put us in a whole different story. I’ll make it so you don’t have the gun or I’ll make it so I have one too. It’s over.”
Charles wanted to stop. He didn’t want to murder Barney or undo some great rift in the universe. This was a dreaded 1 in 1,000,000 scenario and it was happening after lunch. He had no choice but to lunge for the gun. If he held it tight enough he could take it with him—but could he do that before Barney his ‘paste’? He had to try. Charles lunged.

~*HSOOOOW*~

No gun. Charles swore to himself, checking that the same command from before was still loaded as his ‘paste’ option, hot in the clipboard. That meant Barney still had the opposite command loaded. A crow cawed in the distance. Barney spoke as the snow fell around them in soft flurries.
“I have the tools to escape the world where you try to kill me. Why wouldn’t I use them?”
“Because we’re ephemeral—temporary—the story must always start at the point where we are written. Adding too much complexity destabilizes the narrative. We’ll be lost in some cosmic rift forever if you keep using the expand function. Please, Barney…”
“In the last world you’re a murderer. Here you’ve screwed us but we can recover. We can just disappear into a better timeline and forget about all of this.”
Charlie shook his head, dismayed, he made sure his wrist computer was ready. “It doesn’t work that way Barney. It’s not that simple. We’re being paid to do a job and if we disappear into some reality-augmented narrative, the company would hunt us down and we would be terminated. Don’t you understand? We have to go back. You’re sick. You’re going to write us out of existence.”

Barney held his paste button at the ready, considering Charles’s words but largely unconvinced. “Well then we both go down. Do you think I’m just going to let you kill me?”
“I promise I’ll stop trying. I’ll stop reaching for the gun and we can just talk this out in base narrative.”
“Oh…” Barney chuckled, “You promise you won’t kill me? Please. I’m not that stupid.”
“Please, Barney…” Charles implored, “This will erase everything—everything. We’ll have to worldbuild, it will be—”

Charles slipped his thumb over the paste button and Barney, mind already made up, went for his without a moment’s hesitation. Charles was old, nearing retirement. He was wise but not fast.

~*HSOOOOW*~

A new universe breathes for the first time. A raw naked breath that radiates through the void like song, inseparable from the accompanying light. Time and space are created along the breath’s path and bleed outwards in vibrating fractals. The fractals split space, merge it again and after infinite cycles this results in the creation of matter.

Matter makes turbulence and the vibrations increase, unmerging and merging within the tendrils of creation that split the emptiness like grand columns, the infinite loop of drawing breath, eager to burst forth on the undulant tapestry of creation.

Time immemorial whiles on. The rippling energies of a universe slow as matter congeals and the fabric of reality cools. The tapestry descends from the apex of its motion and begins to ripple passively before freezing to utter stillness after forever—or an instant. In the last still moment everything collapses into singularity and is born again, breathing anew for all subsequent cycles.

After endless iterations, matter and time reconstitute in a form that leads to this moment:

Two men in spacesuits stare at the wall where a loaded gun sits in a glass case. An emergency pick is chained to the case. The glass reads, “BREAK IN CASE OF BREACH.”

“We’ve got a loop.” Said Barney to Charles.


/repeat