Phase Q/What Not?

Enough of this. Time to get out. While there’s time.

And while there’s space.

Recalling the ease of all those eons of slumber, you pop a pill and hop back into bed, metaphorically speaking.

Mechanically speaking, it’s more like rematerializing in a world that converts material into waste, without doing any work. In a way, you’re choosing to skip out on whatever it is that would come of actually living. The dimensional quilt rings a charm, and practically out of the void the quantum disruptors return.

You have a vague sensation that the Zonnyxes programmed some codes into you, which made you want this destiny.

As the high-pitched whirr drones on, Zonnyx assault factors plow through the metaverse. In their wake, nothing remains.

This time, as space and time and matter and energy all unwind, they roll over every quantum hitch, leaving behind nothing.

Your conscious awareness, your mind, yourself – you dissipate. Into nothingness. No trace remains.

In the blackness, nothing stirs. The metaverse voids itself of anything and everything. No worlds carry on, no dimesions, no dimensionless pseudospaces, no Triads or Fyuchees or anyone or anything else.

And in the silence, no one minds the absence of anything.

And in the darkness, there’s nothing there to see anyway.

Nothing.

Over the equivalent of a thousand, a million, a billion lifetimes, any number, it remains even quieter than empty space. For space itself is something. This is nothing at all.

How could it happen? Just as something could exist at all in any context or shape or form. But instead of something, nothing.

If nothing could speak, it might say something like this: “If something can exist instead of nothing at all, then why not ask if nothing can exist instead of something at all? In a way, this seems even clearer, actually. After all, usually wouldn’t you think of anything as having a cause? I think this works out rather neatly, myself, having nothing come from nothing. It seems more poetic, and logical, right? I mean, why should something come of nothing? I think that it makes a lot more sense for there just to be nothing at all. If there were senses, I mean. Oh, and why should there ever have been something? Well, I don’t know. But I don’t have to answer that, because now there is nothing, so there is no one to ask and no one to answer to. I don’t even exist, I’m just a hypothetical voice to add character. Really, there’s nothing here. Oh, and by the way, whenever you said that something’s ‘worth nothing’ or there's ‘nothing doing’ or any of those other insulting, derogatory sayings, you should have thought twice because now look who’s laughing. I’m here, and you’re not. Or I would be if I were here. And yes, I’m going on and an about this just because I can, because I, nothing, am the only thing around, as there isn’t actually anything around, just nothing, so I can say as I please and do as I please and there’s nothing here to stop me. Except me. And I'm nothing.”

And on, and on, and on, and on.

• Retire to the island.
• Wait it out.

Phase Q: An interactive adventure.