Chương 29: Traumatizing People on Purpose

"Congratulations on completing your special power training, recruits," Commander announces.

"What you have learned here is a basic background of knowledge on how to control the abilities that random chance has decreed to give you, and a basic understanding of what your future role in the military might be. Today, you begin your journey of actually, possibly, maybe being worthy of being part of that military."

We're lined up in the parking lot, yawning at the sunrise as Commander yells at us. It's still fairly dark outside, but apparently we'll need to get used to being woken even earlier than we were already. I'm sure everyone is looking forward to that.

"Until this day I have treated you all like fragile children," Commander continues, "because that is exactly what you all are. Even the oldest among you are about to be born again, and there will be just as much crying and pain as the first time you plopped out of a womb. Many of you have the arrogance to believe that you are special, that being superhuman makes you greater than human. But humanity is what we fight for, and it is humanity that will disabuse you of any notions of greatness.

It is humanity that will take your humanity from you, and turn you into soldiers. It is humanity that will wield you like the weapons you are to take back our planet. And though nothing I say here will prepare you to be reborn as a soldier, I will say this."

Hands behind her back, she walks down the line, staring at every one of us.

"You will be training alongside powerless humans. Some of your drill instructors will be powerless humans. And though when you are ready you and your fellow recruits will be given a gun, with live ammunition, completely capable of killing a man with a twitch of your finger… all of you will start boot camp as weapons already. All of you, from the moment you step out of our insular little island of superheroes, will be able to kill almost anyone you could ever want. And I promise you, you are going to want to."

She stops walking, and a smile creeps up her face.

"So don't forget: if you murder someone in basic, you're not going to be put in jail. You're not going to be removed from the Army. You're not going to get to escape this war. If you refuse to learn how to wield yourselves as proper weapons, then you will simply be wielded by someone else.

Maybe I'll even see some of you again… but probably not. The leash-holders they use for treasonous little fucks don't have my tender touch."

She claps once, sharp and loud.

"So! Come up when I call your name and stand where I tell you. Anderson!"

People start getting called up one by one, and it doesn't take long to see that we're getting sorted into two groups. I watch very carefully where everyone goes, looking for patterns. I don't see any; it's an even split down the middle, and by some miracle of chance or explicit design Maria, Peter, Christine, Anastasia, and I all end up in the same group alongside five other supers.

"You all stay right where you are," Commander says, motioning to our group.

"Cross Country will pop in to take you all to Fort Jackson shortly. The rest of you all load up into these buses…"

She starts directing the other group as we stand around and wait as instructed. Fort Jackson, huh?

"Where's Fort Jackson?" somebody asks.

"South Carolina," someone else answers.

"Isn't that on the coast?" Christine asks.

"I mean, South Carolina has a coast, but it's a big state. If you're a hundred miles from the ocean you're not considered to be in a war zone," I say.

"It's the only other still-functional Army base from before the aliens showed up," the guy who knew the state explains.

"It probably has a better setup than the temp camps. My guess is they're splitting us up between the two for efficiency."

Hmm, yeah. They probably have to be specifically prepared for powered people, and putting us in the best bases is likely desirable for a number of reasons.

"Well, it's really cool that we all still get to be together!" Anastasia pipes up.

"I wouldn't count on it. We'll be in the same company, probably, but I doubt they'll put us all in the same platoon."

Yeah, I doubt they want us all in one place. Makes us a lot harder to handle.

A new domain suddenly appears nearby, causing Anastasia, me, and a couple other people to immediately turn around and face it, bodies tense. I relax as soon as I see who it is, though. It's just Cross Country again. He holds out his hands.

"First two," he directs simply. The two closest people grab one hand each and then all three of them vanish. A moment later, Cross Country returns alone.

"Next two."

Before I know it I've been moved from one hot, muggy state to another, ushered into a cramped building, and given a whole lot of paperwork. Thanks to once again being the proud owner of Lia's wallet, I can actually fill it all out, although I am sorely tempted to list my birthday as the day of the incursion just to see what happens. It's extra funny that it would actually be my real birthday, just with the wrong year.

I don't, of course, but after a couple of literal hours of paperwork, ranging from medical information and mental health surveys to twelve dozen waivers that all basically say 'we own your soul,' I am moved on to physical examination. This is a particularly weird experience, because somehow it is the first time I've had a detailed physical examination since getting my powers, and hoo boy do my powers make the whole thing a little odd.

"Alright, we need a urine sample," the examiner tells me.

"Sure," I say.

"Whose urine?"

She gives me a weird look.

"…Yours," she says.

"Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?" I say.

"I can produce pretty much any variety of urine you want on command, in pretty much any quantity."

"I… just normal urine, please," she says.

"Alright, I'll do my best to figure out what that means."

I head into the bathroom, command Lia's default body to make some urine, and piss it into a cup. Then I walk out, hand it to the lady, and she directs me over to a chair.

"Okay, now we're gonna draw some blood," she says.

"Cool," I say.

"Whose blood?"

"Yours!"

Most of the physical testing is of course super easy. My body is literally composed of other people's bodies, who have already passed these tests, whenever I want it to be. They give me a bunch of vaccines, too, which is pretty much entirely pointless, but it's interesting watching my immune system work for a little while before I instinctively return to Lia's template, obliterating the vaccines in my bloodstream and the white blood cells attacking them. Whoops.

But again, if I ever need an immune system for something, I already have access to pre-vaccinated blood… but also an immune system is unlikely to ever be important for me because I can delete infections from inside my body the exact same way I delete bullets.

"Would you prefer to wear your hair up or have it cut?" one of the Army people asks me.

"Women can wear their hair at any length but your hair may not touch your collar, so if you don't cut it you have to keep it up."

Damn, that's gonna be really hard for Anastasia. I'll have to get some really funky braids going on to collect that much hair above her collar. I can probably manage it though? I shapeshift my hair up into a pixie cut while I think about it, planning out the simplest and most comfortable styles that I think will work.

"Recruit Morgan? I asked if you…" the hair lady trails off, staring at my head.

"Oh. Never mind. Moving on, then…"

I am given my uniform and some other basic gear before getting lumped in with around thirty other women and—to my great relief—one Anastasia. Christine and Maria are nowhere to be seen, though, and a quick expansion of my domain confirms that Anastasia and I are the only people with powers in the group. She runs over to me as soon as she spots me, shoving her face into my belly and wrapping her arms around me in a big hug. It looks like someone already got her hair up somehow, and props to whoever managed it.

"You're here!" she grins at me.

"Oh geez I thought I would be alone!"

We have the attention of all the other women in the room now, though I guess it's kind of weird calling them 'women' when like me, they're all barely eighteen. Most of them have chosen to get haircuts rather than mess around with putting it all in a bun every day, but one of the bun girls addresses us before the silent stares can get too awkward.

"I guess you have powers, then?" she asks.

"I haven't even done anything yet," I say.

"Yeah, but there's no reason the kid would be here otherwise, and she clearly knows you."

Fair point. I should have thought of it. I'm just disappointed to be clocked this soon because I thought I was doing a pretty good job of looking normal ever since walking into this room. I guess everyone was going to figure it out sooner rather than later anyway, but still! I was trying really hard!

"Well yeah, I have powers," I nod.

"I'm Lia Morgan. Nice to meet you all."

"Jazzlyn Garner," she nods.

"Call me Jazz."

Wow. That's not the weirdest name I've ever heard, but it's up there. I guess her parents must have really liked the blues.

"Thanks for keeping an eye on Ana for me," I say, not having any real idea if she was doing that beyond the fact that she and Ana were standing nearby when I walked in, but if she was then she deserves to be thanked and if she wasn't then she deserves to be guilt-tripped about it.

"No problem," she says. Cool. Sounds like she did.

"I'm glad she has someone she knows here. Not really sure how to raise a kid, let alone a super-kid. What do you two do, anyway?"

"Nothing," a voice calls out from the front of the room.

"You don't talk about powers in basic. Your drill sergeant will eat you alive for it."

A pair of female soldiers walk towards us, motioning us towards them.

"Follow us. We're going to get you situated with your new home for the next ten weeks."

And so follow them we do, eventually ending up in a large but still cramped room full of bunk beds and wall lockers. Anastasia and I are thankfully assigned to the same bunk, and the locker is left empty because the next-to-zero personal items I own (literally just Lia's wallet) were confiscated more or less as soon as I got here.

The soldiers threaten us a little with a 'last call' to come clean about any contraband items we may have smuggled in before giving us more details about the space, showing us the various cleaning duties, and teaching us how to line up and stand for the rest of the day.

The next day goes similarly, and it's similarly boring. If I want to, I can just use the brains of the soldiers teaching us and let my body instinctively understand whatever motions and habits they're trying to impose on us. I'm a little worried this will mean I don't actually learn those habits myself, but that makes me start worrying whether or not learning new habits is even possible for me. It must be, right? If I keep updating my templates, I should keep changes to brains that occur while I am using them.

Same with stuff like muscle growth, but… I mean, is there any reason to care? If growing new habits is just like growing new muscles, and I just use my powers to shorthand the latter, why not do the former?

I suppose it's probably important to have access to the most important bits of muscle memory in every brain. Going soldier brain to do drills and shoot guns is fine and dandy, but what if I have to try to do those things while Raptor-brained? If I'm in a warzone, I'll want to have access to my alien radar basically all the time, and I might still need to also be able to use a gun. I wonder if there's a way to mix brains so that I get a customized selection of habits and muscle memory?

I know mixing brains is possible, at least a little bit. Hooking up alien senses to a human brain requires me to blur the line between the two, experimenting with methods of connection until I finally find one that sticks. Mixing and matching neurons from different people sounds like a quick way to lobotomize myself, but it should be theoretically possible, right? An absolutely insane thing to attempt, maybe, but… well, I have a superpower. Superpowers can be kinda bullshit.

A significant amount of time is spent just teaching us how to do chores the 'correct' way. Cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the showers, making our beds, sweeping the floors. We get introduced to the concept of fire watch, having at least two people awake at any given time of night, swapping shifts every hour. With the thirty-some women in our platoon, that means any given person has fire watch about every other day, and depending on what hour your shift is it could really fuck with your sleep.

There isn't much time to socialize, but Ana and I are fine with just working some basic chores for a few days and learning how to stand to attention and line up in various positions and situations. I can only hope Christine is doing well on her own. On the morning of the fourth day, we're ordered out of bed at four-thirty in the morning, lined up in our sleepwear in front of our beds, and informed we will be introduced to our Drill Sergeants. Here we go. Now boot camp really begins.

The woman who walks into the room first is quite a bit older than we are, probably in her late fifties or early sixties. I stretch out my domain and find none coming from her, only a tightly toned body kept as strong and fit as it can be despite age trying to wear away at it. Her blonde and gray hair is put up in a bun just underneath her big green bush hat, which is interesting because I haven't seen any of the other personnel wear a hat indoors. I guess big hat means big importance.

She walks down the rows of our beds with the other drill instructors, glowering at each and every one of us as we stand at attention to the best of our abilities.

"It would seem," the woman says, her voice startlingly loud in such a cramped space, "that some rotten queef wisps blew in thinking they could be soldiers. No, I'm being too generous, aren't I? You useless cunts don't even have dreams. I'd call you children but you're not even people. You're nothing but piles of shit, and it's my duty to shape you into something with worth."

How colorful. I'm vaguely impressed. She sneers, her hands behind her back as her boots click on the floor, echoing in the silence between her shouts.

"You are going to hate me more than you'll ever hate the enemy. I am going to make those acid-spitting demons feel like your princess-themed birthday parties. I am going to personally destroy each and every one of you in body and soul, because there isn't a single speck of value inside your pathetic bodies that you don't bleed out into a rag! From this day forward you are nothing! You are not human beings! You are not even cockroaches! And you are certainly not fucking soldiers! Do you understand that!?"

We've been told the script.

"Ma'am yes ma'am!"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Do you think I'm your fucking mother!? Do you expect me to breastfeed your sorry asses!? You will address me as sir!"

Aaaand script flipped. Huh. Well, whatever.

"Sir yes sir!"

"What the fuck did you just say!? I didn't hear a goddamn word of it!"

"Sir yes sir!"

"Louder!"

"SIR YES SIR!"

She screams at us. She swears at us. The insults start to get as personal as they are ridiculous. A few idiots stand out, so they naturally get hammered down. And one idiot in particular can't get her stupid power to behave for five fucking minutes.

"What the fuck is growing on your face!?" she asks.

"What the fuck is the matter with you, recruit!?"

I successfully don't flinch as she screams in my ear, but I fail to stop myself from unforming the crystal scales and replacing them with her face.

I quickly shift back to normal, but—

"The fuck was that!? The fuck did you just do!? Answer me, recruit!"

"Sir! My power copies other living things sir!"

"Do you think you're funny!? Did I give you permission to copy my face!?"

"Sir no sir!"

"Then why the fuck did you do it!? Do you think you're special!? Do you think you do not need my permission!?"

"Sir no sir!" I insist, but the shout in my ear sends a twitch of fear up the side of my face that turns into crystalline scale armor, added and removed as fast as I can think.

"Do you think you're better than the rest of us, trainee!?"

"Sir no sir!"

"Then why the fuck is a freak of nature like you showing off!?"

"Sir! I'm not showing off sir!"

"I?

I?

You think a subhuman piece of shit like you gets to say 'I!?' You will refer to yourself as this recruit, because that's all you are! Another body here to learn how to kill and how to die!"

"Sir yes sir!" I shout. What else can I say? Again, my face twists into something inhuman before I can reel it back. I'm trying, I swear I'm trying, but I'm just under threat and in a suboptimal form!

It's bothering me so fucking bad!

"You alien-looking cunt! You could only be this dumb if you hit your damn head falling out of the sky!"

"Sir!" I say, snapping my face back to Lia's.

"What, you trying to look pretty now, Angelface? Are your looks the only thing a stupid bitch like you has got!? Get control of your damn power, recruit!"

"Sir yes sir!"

The entire time this scream session is happening, I keep a bit of my attention on Anastasia. She is definitely handling my beratement worse than I am. While I have to admit that it is a novel experience to be told I'm trying to compensate for my stupidity with good looks, having the drill instructor in my face and screaming in my ear is the only part that really bothers me, not any of the words she's saying. I know it's an act.

The ways she contradicts herself, swaps between topics without warning or reason, it's all calculated to put me so off-guard alongside the fight-or-flight instinct she's instilling that my sense of self starts to crack a little.

Boot camp is about traumatizing people on purpose and gaslighting them into believing the coping mechanisms they are forced to develop are good and just and better than before. And the thing is, in the context of getting people to value obeying over their own lives and making them perfectly comfortable with killing whenever needed, it is indeed a very effective strategy. I don't know if there's a better way to do that to a person, because in a just world nobody would have to.

But Anastasia doesn't know the why or the how. She just sees someone screaming cruel nonsense at her big sister and it is making her very, very angry. I know that she's far from the only person around her age to get powers. The military does have an entire established set of policies around how to handle it, after all.

I'm curious to see how drill instructors have been forced to adapt to the reality of child soldiers; all the same techniques they use on us would indeed work on a child, but every child who comes through here has superpowers and that changes a lot.

It's very easy to imagine a child discharging a weapon during a tantrum. So how do you force a kid into such a state that they will not have a tantrum, no matter how much you abuse them? Maybe that's what I'm here for. They probably can't afford having people with powers stick on the back lines being drill instructors. In the power training course, it is a necessity.

In boot camp, where the vast majority of people going through are normal humans, it's a lot harder to justify powered staff members outside the few who are probably kept on base in case of an attack. The sort of powers that would likely be best to keep all the way back at base probably still have their own jobs to do with those powers; if your power isn't good enough to be worth protecting and constantly using all on its own, you're not going to be at base, you're going to be at the front lines doing domain duty.

So, speaking of domain duty, that's why I'm paired with Anastasia. If she tries to kill someone, I'm the only person in the platoon who can physically stop her without killing her. I'd like to think it's because we have a very good relationship and I can talk her down, but I suspect the fact that our domains are comparable in strength and I've physically overpowered her once already is the more important thing to the military.

Thankfully, if that's going to be a problem our drill instructor has decided not to find out today. Despite Anastasia's visible rage, she doesn't make a move and the drill instructor doesn't make her one of the many examples of how to get screamed at (step one: do anything).

After our requisite twenty minutes of being creatively insulted, we are informed that we have ten minutes to do thirty minutes worth of tasks and anyone who fails will be making up for that failure in unpleasant ways. To nobody's surprise, we all fail. Thus starts physical training.

I suspect that no one else in our platoon is going to be particularly happy about the fact that I'm literally incapable of not cheating at physical training. As long as I have eaten enough food, I cannot get tired. My body is already fully capable of doing everything the physical training is trying to make us able to do, and whatever extra punishments get thrown our way straight-up cannot faze me, let alone hurt me, if they are designed for normal humans.

I need to be absolutely certain that nobody finds out about this at basically any cost.

I have no idea what sort of intensive training they give superhumans and I have absolutely no desire to find out. The thing is, I know that they are going to be working us until we drop for the express purpose of working us until we drop as the end goal, so I need to be able to be convincingly exhausted. The easiest way to do that is to… well, actually be exhausted. The only reason I don't feel tired is because my body shapeshifts away exhausted muscles and replaces them with fresh ones.

If I can just get myself to stop doing that on instinct, I will just have a normal human stamina. Sure, it will be a normal human stamina that I can technically turn back into infinite stamina anytime I want, but nobody has to know that.

So while everyone else is focusing on not collapsing into a pile of sweat, I'm manually forcing my body to sweat while trying to figure out how to get myself to convincingly collapse. I'm also trying not to laugh at all the people watching Anastasia outperform them; she also has a superhuman stamina, after all. Not by a whole lot, but enough to make her stronger and faster than an adult while not being so strong that intensive training doesn't eventually exhaust her. Which is good, I think.

Being just barely better than everyone else is probably the ideal position in just about any social situation.

The physical training is done outside in the company area, so while I don't really have an opportunity to talk to them, I can glance over at Maria, Christine, and Peter occasionally. I can recognize a few of the other powered people as well, but they're all men. Maria and Christine are in the other platoon of women, and the men are scattered between the other three platoons, with no more than two powered people in a single group.

They're making sure to split us up as much as possible, which makes sense on multiple levels.

Only after an hour of grueling physical training are we allowed to go to breakfast. The mess hall looks basically the same as the one at Fort Moore, and the food is similar as well. I'm not a good judge of how good that is, but according to Christine the food they prepare for the military isn't actually too bad. There's even a selection of desserts in the mess hall, but when Anastasia tries to grab one, the woman who was taking care of her before, Jazz, puts her hand on Anastasia's shoulder to stop her.

"Don't," she says.

"My dad says the desserts are all traps. If anyone eats one they punish the entire platoon without telling you why."

"Seriously?" I ask. God, I mean, that does sound insane enough to be real.

"Seriously seriously," Jazz nods.

"I'm gonna let all the other girls in our platoon know as well. There's all kinds of unspoken rules. They're actively looking for as many excuses as possible to punish us."

"But why?" Anastasia asks.

"Why would they put this stuff here if they don't want us to eat it?"

"It's not about whether or not they actually care if we eat dessert," I explain.

"It's like I told you at Emily's."

Anastasia nods slowly, seeming to at least partially understand. I did my best to educate her about the effective cult indoctrination we're going through. It doesn't matter what the rules are, what matters is that we instantly obey anything our superiors say no matter how absurd, unfair, dangerous, or abusive it happens to be. Immediate, unthinking obedience is as much of a goal of boot camp as actually understanding how to be a soldier.

Absurd punishments for unspoken rules are part of that: they need us to know that whatever we think makes sense doesn't matter. They want us to stop trusting our understanding of logic, reason, decision-making, and morality. They do that by making sure none of those things work anymore.

"No desserts," Anastasia nods.

"Got it."

"So, I take it the two of you know each other pretty well, then?" Jazz asks as we sit down.

"I'm not really sure how or if I can start the process given our current circumstances, but I intend to adopt her," I shrug.

Anastasia excitedly bobs her head up and down.

"But she's not my mom!" she insists.

"She's my big sister!"

"We got trapped in an incursion zone together," I explain.

"It was definitely something of a bonding experience."

"Uh, holy shit, I guess that's one way to put it," Jazz says.

"How the hell did you survive that?"

"By killing a lot of aliens," I answer succinctly.

"Ha!" Jazz grins.

"I guess you're overqualified."

"Eh," I shrug.

"Anastasia and I are pretty damn good at killing aliens, but we have no idea how to do… y'know, military stuff. You said your dad was in the military? You probably know a lot more about that than we do, then."

"What, were your parents not in the military?" she asks. I wince, glancing at Anastasia.

"…Oh. Shit, sorry."

"My parents, for the record, are just way too rich to do anything as plebian as helping people not die," I answer to bring the attention off of Ana.

"They probably haven't even fought the kind of wasp that's native to Earth."

"Mine died," Anastasia says softly. Welp! That didn't work! I think the only thing I can really do here is give her a hug, so that's what I do, squeezing her tight and hoping I can pop the memory right out of her ears.

"Do you cunts think this is schoolyard gossip time!?" our drill instructor suddenly shouts at us.

"Do you think you're here for hugs and fucking kisses!? Shut up and eat your goddamn food! I don't want to see your disgusting hands touching anything but a fork!"

I quickly release Ana and focus carefully on my food, shoveling it down as quickly as I can. Okay, I guess we're not allowed to talk to each other either! Phenomenal. Great to know. I guess they had good reason to hurry us, too, because breakfast only lasts about ten minutes before we're right back to it. The entire company is given fake rubber rifles and forced to repeat marching and standing drills for the next five and a half hours. Left face, right face, to the rear!

We have to know exactly what to do based on any shouted order, and whenever anyone messes up they are berated in front of the entire company and we do it all again. Since this is the first day, a lot of people mess up. But throughout it all, I stay silent and do what I'm told, and before I know it we're eating lunch and then getting back up to do it all again.

After dinner we are returned to platoon-level activities, one of our drill sergeants teaching us things that are generally better learned via methods other than shouting. She does so mostly by shouting, but it is still overall educational. When she has finished up everything she seems to want to teach us for the day, it's chore time, all the way until an hour before bed when we get the only personal time available to us.

It's still constantly monitored, of course, and entirely within the squad bay where our whole platoon shares a single room, but at least there aren't any DIs screaming at us.

Man. There's going to be ten weeks of this. At the very least I suppose I won't get bored. Jazz wanders over to Ana and I while everyone is reeling from the day and clears her throat.

"Sorry kid," she says.

"I said something stupid earlier."

"It's okay," Anastasia shrugs.

Jazz is an interesting person. She's probably the first or second most physically fit person in our platoon, at least for now, and she has clearly prepared for this for a long time. She doesn't strike me as one of the propaganda guzzlers, though. I can't say for sure since I haven't really talked to her about it, but those are the vibes I'm picking up. She's prepared not because she wants to fight, but because she knew she was going to have to so it only made sense to prepare.

I like that kind of person, and I like that she seems to be the only person in our platoon interested in going out of her way to talk to us.

Although I could do without Lia's brain pointing out how hot she is. I mean, most of the people here are pretty attractive, and Jazz isn't super notable in that regard. She has green eyes, dusty blonde hair tied up in a bun, and a fairly average athletic build. She's not particularly tall or short, and not particularly flat or curvy. A very average person in overall appearance, outside of how hard she's doubtlessly worked to keep in shape, but even that isn't particularly apparent externally.

I can tell because of my powers, but plenty of girls around look like they have more muscle mass just because they don't drink enough water.

"Uh," Jazz whispers, blinking at me.

"I don't know a good way to ask this, so… why are you white?"

"Huh?" I say, and then realize I've been slowly implementing traits from her body this entire time.

"Oh, crap, sorry."

I return to boring old Lia standard, ignoring the parts of me grumbling about having to keep doing so all the time.

"She turns into other people sometimes," Ana says, patting my shoulder.

"Christine says it's creepy but I think it's cool."

"No offense, but I think I'm on team creepy," Jazz says.

"You do you, though."

Unfortunately that is one of the only things I cannot do.

"If you think this is bad, wait until you see me turn into an alien," I say.

"Oh god, can you do that?" Jazz grimaces.

"Fucking hell, the drill instructors are totally going to make us fight you."

"Honestly, part of me kind of hopes they do?" I admit.

"That would be really useful experience. Plus, I could do anatomy lessons and point out all the best places to shoot the different kinds of aliens I have access to. …Although, that would only really apply to the aliens from Chicago."

"Ah yes, Chicago, the well-known homeland of monsters from outer space," Jazz nods.

"And then the incursion happened!"

I snort.

"Part of me feels like I should protest, but…"

"…You're a walking example of why I'm exactly right?" Jazz finishes for me with a smirk.

"Hey, you don't have to say it," I grin back, getting a chuckle out of her.

"Well, hopefully I didn't hurt your feelings too badly," she says.

"See you around, superhero."

She wanders off, and free time is over before I know it. When I go to bed, I open my eyes to see myself slowly descending through an ever-changing expanse. Ah, okay. I guess I get the fall dream tonight, rather than the meat dream. That's nice. This is a lot prettier than the meat dream.

A pleased satisfaction rumbles up through my bones as I compliment the chaos around me, smashing into my mind but not overwhelming it quite as completely as it did back when these dreams first started. The enormous pulses of thought and emotion are still painfully beyond me, but I'm getting better at handling them, I think. Whatever entity keeps brainblasting me feels like it's happier the less its communication hurts me, which is at least somewhat reassuring.

I keep ending up in this place, falling towards the power that sustains it, because that power loves me so much. It wants the best for me, I think, it's just… clumsy.

I'm not entirely certain where that confidence comes from. I get the impression I might have figured it out over the course of countless prior dreams, but the falling dreams are always so much more difficult to remember than the meat dreams. I feel almost awake during those, but this? This is unmistakably a dream. It could not possibly be anything else.

-T CaN, the world claws at me.

iT mer-LY is N-t.

The pain that flows through me when it speaks isn't the kind I can just shapeshift away. It wounds something deeper, but it is from those wounds that it heals back stronger. This is a dream. But am I the dreamer?

I of Y-U, my soul tears, aND -oU o- ME.

Ow. I'm not sure that illuminated anything, but I appreciate the attempt, buddy. I think I had a name for you once, but I can't remember what it is.

WH-T -F.

Yeah, something like that. But that wasn't exactly right.

'What If' isn't really a name, it's a question.

Another rumble of pleased satisfaction replaces my conscious thought for a few moments. It's always jarring, no matter how many times it happens, but it's not scary anymore. Every time I am destroyed, I always return, still me. So you like being a question, huh big guy? I guess that's cool. Properly eldritch and all. But you aren't just questions. You're answers, too. You certainly answer a lot of my questions, anyway, even if the answers don't always make sense. Isn't there another name for you? One you also like?

A quiet affirmation, or at least as quiet as the universe can be, confirms that it is so. In fact, more names is better. I am permitted to give as many as I like.

That's the thing, though. I'm not sure I know you well enough to give you a name. What are you? A dream? My power? A god? An illusion? A hallucination? Don't answer that. I know you'll say yes to all of it. But that's what makes it hard. You're so many things I don't know which one to name you after. But I'll think about it, okay? You seem nice enough. If you want more names, I'll give you some good ones. Names are important to me.

Again, I stop existing but for the gleeful anticipation that I become, and then I am me once more. For being some kind of eldritch universe-god constantly pulling me further inside it, this thing sure is easy to excite. It's just pretty fucking happy. I like that. It's a weird change of pace. Oh! Speaking of changes of pace, by any chance do you want the world to end?

When I come to, I find myself unable to process the surviving fragments of the answer that I received. I think I'll choose to interpret that as 'it's complicated.' But I definitely get the impression that my buddy here isn't seeking it out. At minimum, it would be sad if I died. So hey! Before I forget to ask again, is there any chance you'd be willing to help us save the world?

- maKe thINGS P-s-ibLE, the truth becomes known.

Y-U maKe -H- CH-ice.

And then I no longer exist until I wake up.