No longer a battle stage, the place Spiderland and Iker walked on became a landscape. Even the passage of time felt relatively normal as the distant and dusky mountains loaded into view along with the more realistic night sky.

  "Please tell me what's going on," Iker pleaded. "Saying I'm confused... I need a better word for what I'm feeling."

  "I can inject into your neurons all the knowledge I possess," Spiderland said. "However... you will no longer be you."

  What was said made perfect sense to the boy, even if Iker could not explain how. Abreast from each other the god Spiderland's luminescence dwindled considerably, perhaps to make it easier for the boy to exchange glances with ver as they marched on to the haunted mansion. Until his sneakers and vis sleek boots reached the pebble road that led to the destination, Iker stayed silent to process it all. "It's some kind of... infohazard isn't it?"

  "Understanding the totality of what is happening to you will be harmful to your sense of self, yes," Spiderland explained. "It was imposed upon you in past timelines, but now the existing one is trying to be more consistent with giving all of us free will. When you became like me, you wished you could have yourself back."

  "I... I became like you?" Iker asked.

  "From a certain perspective, you are always like me," Spiderland replied. "However, that's why we are here. To help you individuate from your nirvana form. You also wanted to help save all that ever was and all that will ever be, and my job was to find a way to give you both of these things."

  "When Ember's sister sacrificed herself to change the laws of physics to stop nuclear weapons from working, she became a whole different person," Iker said. "So in the future... and this is news to me that I somehow get flux powers... I achieve nirvana too?"

  "Not the same way Imogen did in the past, but yes," Spiderland said. "We cheated your nirvana form. And we are going to do it again, but first, it's time for you to remember some things."

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  JULY 5, 2080

  RESETS: 0

  The emergency flight was quite tranquil, especially for two technocrats boarding it to achieve singularity.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "You know Iker, I had quite the strange dream during my nap," Alice Wami, the CEO of Memoryfeed said upon her awakening. She had gotten rid of her dreadlocks a long time ago, around the same time her alcoholism became more obtrusive. There was an excuse to carousal today however as the jet reached touchdown, how if her prophecy were to come to be, Memoryfeed would become the most untouchable corporation in Earth's history.

  While sitting across from her on the private jet, Iker remained silent.

  "Hey... how old are you by the way hotshot?" Alice asked with a smirk.

  "... twenty-four," Iker replied. With the stereotypical body of a skinny tech bro, a good joke at a bar would be him being a supersoldier in a different timeline.

  "I had this weird dream where you were with my two sons in a flying city," Alice said. "And you were training to them to be supersoldiers. The most fascinating part was that some of you folks didn't just have superstrength or whatever. It looked like a terrible sci-fi fantasy."

  Iker turned his gaze away as soon as she finished speaking, and she chugged the rest of her pre-celebratory champagne.

  "Anyways. Thank you for coming this late with me. I wouldn't have done it without you."

  The strange part was that their destination was not one of the facilities that had a massive supercomputer built to surpass the capacity of multiple human brains, but to the Flamingo Hotel inside the strip. Maybe some kind of device was awaiting them there. The utmost regulation was placed upon magnetic cars across what remained of the states, but not Las Vegas, and Alice, Iker, and the driver took advantage of that fact. Avoiding the ridiculous traffic and crowds below and piercing through massive and flying holographic ads, the magnetic car reached the rooftop of the hotel in no time, gliding past the three-dimensional glowing flamingo pacing across the frontispiece. Iker caught sight of teenagers on the sidewalk trying to get themselves intentionally stepped on by the fake flamingo.

  Once the magnetic car landed, Alice's calmness vanished and she expected Iker to run along with her. He did not blame her. If she was correct, they were about to make history. Whether it was delusion or sound theory, all that mattered to Iker is that he was getting paid overtime. Alice did not take the elevator, she even ran down the stairs with her heels on.

  "What floor do we have to go to?" Iker asked while panting.

  "The second—"

  "Octavia Butler! Really?" Iker yelled. He even scared himself from his own reaction, however Alice reassured him with her own gaze of embarrassment. And they did the reasonable thing and grabbed the elevator.

  "Which—"

  "Two-o-four."

  And while they ran to that unit, Alice frantically dug through her purse, allowing Iker to get there first. "Don't we need a keycard?"

  "My phone is all we need," Alice replied, pulling out her phone... and a gleaming tree branch.

  "What is that? Are you going to do witchcraft?" Iker asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "How about hoodoo instead?" Alice corrected.

  At first, when Alice opened the unit with a picture of a flamingo and a keycard on her phone screen, nothing stood out. That was until she waved the odd branch in the room, numinous glimmers of light getting Iker's heart to jump before he could react to Alice's peculiar behavior.

  For a faint moment in time, Iker and Alice spotted an afterimage of an author typing away.