Dear █████,
I’m still figuring out how this whole arrangement is being sorted. Like, all the pieces that got changed, all the little odds and ends that’ve been irreversibly shuffled and reshuffled. And a lot of those pieces fixate around the person who I guess I’ve inadvertently replaced. This guy named Adam Mason. You and I, we’ve become... so different here. But I can’t even say it’s wrong, because it’s more like... At least for me, it’s more like... What I would have ended up becoming?
As far as I’m understanding, Adam Mason is kind of a big deal here. To some degree, anyway. He’s got his own website, with his own stuff. Stories that I remember thinking of, way back when, with you, except... more fleshed out. More understandable. Actually good, in other, less uncertain words. And there’s other stuff that I remember I had vague plans for, the barest hints of ideas, that turned into these sprawling metropolises of stories. Like, whole multifaceted things with layers and levels that I feel like I never could have thought up. I can’t even begin to talk about the things I never planned, the things that he just put out there from his own head.
…It feels like I’m looking at a ghost from the future. Does that even make sense? Like I’m a time traveler that’s jumped ahead a bunch of years, and now I’m in this other timeline where I get to see the life I would have been able to live if I’d just stayed put. But the person who lived that life isn’t even around to live it anymore, because of me. I don’t want to say I killed someone, but… haven’t I? Haven’t I, technically? Dress it up in whatever weird meta flavoring you want, but this whole independent person existed, and then didn’t exist, and it’s my fault.
Adam Mason. He was thirty-one years old. We had the same birthday, March 27. All of us do, or did, or whatever. So many of his old sketchbooks are in the attic of our house, just collecting dust, along with whatever detritus this Mom and this Dad picked up over the years, and the... decades. So many drawings that in the back of my mind I know I would have made if this was me, but just… wrong. Gone are all the drawings of the shows I watched as a kid, because when he was a kid, they... weren’t on. It’s replaced by everything I assume he was into. But the original ideas, the things I made regardless... They’re still there.
Remember that whole thing in third grade? Action Komicz? I’m pretty sure that’s how it was spelled. With some teenager being a chosen one, or whatever other term they used for it, and he encountered all these cryptids and supernatural beings and aliens, and there was a whole other universe full of them, but they were invading the normal world and disturbing the peace? How New York got invaded by aliens and Al Capone’s ghost set off a nuke and there were mutant talking rabbits? I remember it, clear as day. I remember pitching the idea to you in the kitchen and I remember doing the math in my head about how old he — Zach, that was his name — would have to be to drive? Like, oh, it’s 16, so he’d be in... eleventh grade.
I’m never going to get to be in eleventh grade. I’m never going to get to see high school, or even the rest of middle school, what little of it there was. I’m never going to get to play Minecraft with any of my friends, I’m never going to get to see who wins America’s Got Talent, I’m never going to have another piano lesson... I traded away everything that made me me and in return, what do I get? I get to look at my picture-perfect life, lived by a dead me.
...So many things are different here. We live in the same house. The same town. The layout of every room is more or less the same. But the things we own, the way it feels... it’s all so off. Everything about it is. All different flowers, all different furniture, Dad picked the guitar back up and you can tell, there’s so much equipment everywhere, even more than before. It’s my house. It’s supposed to be my house. But it’s not.
It’s just not.
Stay tuned,
Adam
1/5/13
Dear █████,
I’ve always known this world was fake. That so much stuff got changed around. I know I wrote earlier about how a lot of it was because I changed. But you changed, too. You’re Jeff Mason now. You’re thirty-one. You’re born on March 27. And you’re still six minutes younger than me, I checked the birth certificates, I know the folder where he keeps them. And I’m still not over the fact that you’re just... you’re just literally working in Aperture Science. The actual place. It actually exists. It’s real. It’s not real but it’s real in HERE.
But the really huge stuff like that, the obvious fabrications, just kind of numb my brain a bit. It’s too much to wrap around at once. It’s like a sensory overload that’s been mathematically tested to short-circuit every neuron that I have conscious control over. It’s the little things that really sink into me. The odds and ends that stick out, the details that no one would notice but me. And I think what sealed the deal for me was when I went out back to where the basketball hoop was.
I went down those stairs, same as they ever were, but I could tell different people lived in those houses because all the decorations and all the plants were different, it was just so... obvious. And I went down there, made the right, made the left up the ramp, and walked through the gate. And there was a group of kids just chilling, playing basketball. Just a couple of years older than us, if that. And I walked up to them and asked if I could join in a game. Just casually, quietly, to test the waters. To see if anything would happen.
The kids right next to me kinda stopped and shuddered for a second, and I could see every hair on their neck stand up, and he turned and looked around and pretty clearly didn’t know what to say. And the rest of them started joking around, taunting them for looking scared. So I yelled it louder that time, and every single kid turned around to look me dead in the eyes. They could see me. Their eyes weren’t unfocused, they weren’t staring off somewhere. They were looking straight at me. Their gaze was like lightning, bridging the gap between how fake I felt and how real they looked, and I felt impossibly insignificant in that moment, more than I ever had before.
How… how can I explain it? You and I both know there were no kids in our neighborhood. No one our age. Just people walking their dogs. People walking their babies, people walking with their parents. Rabbits and robins and cicadas. The same sets of cars every day. The same sets of trees. No one like us. So to see these people, here... It felt so off. Like this was the universe reminding me that nothing I knew applied. Nothing that I thought mattered applied, anyway. That I was gone, and I was wrong, and everything I cared about would change.
And after a second, they softened up and ignored me and went back to playing their game, as though I wasn’t even there. I had half a mind to shove them into each other. See if the wonderful rainbow that seeped behind all the seams and cracks in this purgatory would swallow them whole, like it did to that couple.
I can make people disappear. I can make people forget I exist. And I can make people forget they exist. I can trick the universe, the entire universe, into skipping over people. Into erasing them, making them non-entities. I can see the rainbow dance around my fingertips and corrupt the air around me and it sickens me and makes me shudder and makes me want to throw up, but I can do it all the same.
I’ve been given a gift. An amazing gift.
Stay tuned,
Adam
1/31/13
Dear █████,
Hey. I just wanted to catch up. See how things are. See how things have been. I know, I know. Who am I kidding. You can’t see this. You can’t see me. Maybe you’ll be able to in the future, and that’ll be the happiest day of my life. But as it stands... you can’t. But. Still. I just wanted to do this whole one-sided gag, since it’s... you know. A special day.
I wonder what you got. I wonder if time even passes for you up there, if you know that I’m gone, and that I’m stuck here. It must. Weeks have gone by in here, and I can absolutely feel every excruciating tick of that clock. I know I’m getting older. I know everything around me is moving on, uncaring, unknowing. Everyone’s just simply having a wonderful Christmastime. Everyone’s playing in the snow, and unwrapping presents, and watching the same movies every time. I could list them off like clockwork by now, rapid-fire. Rudolph. Frosty’s. Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Nightmare Before Christmas. A Christmas Carol. A Charlie Brown Christmas. The Grinch. It’s the routine. The routine that sets in and once it’s ripped away it makes you wonder how you’re supposed to live without it.
That’s what I’m missing. It’s what I’m missing! The old routine. I have a new routine now, of course, one formed by necessity of me having to cope with not existing on any possible plane of reality, and not wanting to exist on whatever plane this is. But it can never be the same as the old one. It just can’t. Mom and Dad aren’t here to do all the little things, all the big things, that they’ve always done. And you aren’t there. Even when you’ve always been there.
So I was just, you know. Just curious. About what you got. I know I wrote that up there, but then I got sidetracked. I... usually get sidetracked. Especially when I write these. It’s just really too easy to let my mind wander, you know? It’s not like I have anyone I can actually talk to about all the stuff I think of, and about all my experiences. I’m just curious. How was the Wii U? I know the launch lineup isn’t stellar, but... You know. Did you get anything on Steam? I’m going to assume you did, and I’m going to assume it was good.
...I should also probably assume that. If time is flowing the same for the both of us. That really, you haven’t been doing anything for Christmas. Except wondering where I am. And how I’m doing. And maybe, you’re… Maybe you’re writing letters for me, too. Maybe you’re out looking. Maybe you’re...
...
Merry Christmas,
Adam
12/25/12
Dear Jeff,
How do you sleep at night? Do you sleep at night? Or are you up at every single moment of every single day of your life, constantly moving your feet to run away from the only family you have in this world? Do you think about it? Do you think about it often? Does the knowledge of your cowardice eat away at your self-image and poison your heart with the truth? That you left them? That you left me?
I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU EVER SINCE I FOUND OUT YOU EXISTED AND YOU’VE BEEN HIDING AWAY IN SOME BACKWARDS CORNER OF THE WORLD LIKE A COWARD. FOR WHAT. YOU RAN FROM APERTURE SCIENCE, RIGHTFULLY SO, I SHOULD ADD. YOU WORKED ON THE WORST PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY TO EVER EXIST AND THEN YOU ABANDONED IT BECAUSE YOU REALIZED YOU HATED WHAT YOU MADE. And that’s good! That’s really really good! That’s a great start! It’s just that I feel like, you know, since then, maybe you, uh, overshot things a little? And you started abandoning anyone and anything that you ever worked on? Because when you ran from Aperture Science I’m going to assume you realized you had somewhere to go and you consciously ignored that fact? FOR WHAT?
YOU COULD HAVE COME BACK. YOU SHOULD HAVE COME BACK. SO THAT I COULD SEE YOU. SO THAT I COULD KNOW YOU. SO THAT I COULD MAYBE HAVE SOMEONE TO CONNECT TO BESIDES MY PARENTS, BESIDES, I, I GUESS THEY’RE OUR PARENTS. I WANT AN ACTUAL BROTHER. SOMEONE THAT I CAN CALL A BROTHER ANYWAY, EVEN THOUGH YOU AREN’T EVEN REALLY MY BROTHER, JUST A CHEAP FAKE FAKEY IDIOT THAT I CAN’T EVEN RELATE TO! BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE COME BACK. WHY COULDN’T YOU COME BACK. WHY? TELL ME! I WANT YOU TO LOOK ME IN THE EYES AND TELL ME.
I’M GOING TO RUN BACK TO MICHIGAN IF I HAVE TO. I’LL RUN ACROSS THE ENTIRE GODDAMN WORLD IF I HAVE TO. I’LL EXPOSE EVERY FLAW, EVERY INACCURACY, EVERY DIFFERENCE, ALL THE CRACKS AND IMPERFECTIONS AND EXPOSURES CONTAINING A BATSHIT WHIRLWIND OF ANARCHY AND COLORS AND MAYHEM IF THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES TO FIND YOU! BECAUSE I CAN’T LIVE KNOWING THAT I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU. BECAUSE I KNOW THAT SOME CONGLOMERATE OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELS FROM A VIDEO GAME THAT CAME OUT THIS YEAR BURYING ITSELF UNDER THE EARTH AND ACTING LIKE IT’S BEEN THERE FOR DECADES HAS TO BE MY FAULT. BECAUSE EVERY SINGLE CHANGE CAN ALL BE TRACED BACK TO APERTURE APPEARING, AND TO ME APPEARING. BECAUSE I CAN’T STAND HOW CONTENT EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IS IN IGNORING MY FRACTURED LIFE, SPIRALING OUT OF THE REACH OF ANYONE AND CRUMBLING INTO NOTHING, AND HOW LIFE MARCHES ON AND ON INTO THE HORIZON AND LEAVES ME BEHIND IN THE DUST.
BECAUSE I’M YOUNG, ARROGANT, AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.
Adam
5/4/13
Dear █████,
The fight against the Godmodder has been… Well, I mean, it’s taken some interesting turns. Like, really interesting. As it turns out, me grabbing that FEZ using my Far Lands powers actually had consequences? I know I told you to play it; I’m just going to assume that you have at this point. I think it’s a safe bet. So, like. I tried to use the FEZ. Emphasis on tried. From what I’ve heard it boosts you up an entire dimension, no matter what? So, like, how Gomez was able to manipulate the third dimension, I could manipulate the fourth. Crazy, huh?
Yeah, well, emphasis on the word could, there. Turns out I must not have been cleared to use it or something, because when I tried, it shattered the Hexahedron and caused the Glitch to happen in the actual game! Now it’s corrupting the Godmodder, distorting him into some unrecognizable sea of polygons, but... it’s spreading across everything. There’s this list of integrities at the top of the field now. “Godmodder existence integrity,” “environment integrity,” “overall playability,” and, very worryingly, “player invincibility integrity.”
There’s... Well, there’s a very real chance that I could actually die here. I know it wouldn’t really be that bad, because it’s not like I’m literally dying. But if what I think is going to happen is happening, then we won’t just not be able to destroy the Godmodder, we won’t be able to do anything.Black holes will consume the server, our Minecraft accounts will be torn to pieces, our computers will probably brick, if I’m being honest, and this whole crazy battle that I’ve already invested so much time and thought and sweat and blood into will be over. And it’ll kinda be my fault?
I guess TT2000 didn’t have to let the Glitch go through. He could have axed it. But he let it happen. He was cool with it. He’s encouraging it. I guess that makes things somewhat easier, since if he’s allowing it, then he’s gotta have a plan to fix it, and it’s not like he’d really let us have a bad ending, right? I mean, it should be simple. Restore the Hexahedron’s pieces, bada bing, bada boom. Only problem is, I have no clue where they are. And if it takes too long of a time to find them, those integrities could run out, and then… Say goodbye to player invisibility, I guess.
Oh, god. GLaDOS. She must really not be happy about this development, I just realized. We spent all that time and effort trying to push her onto the Anti-Godmodder side and now there’s the computer glitch to end all computer glitches running amok in this server! I’d better make sure nothing happens to Her. I absolutely don’t want Her getting angry at me. Not again. Not after what happened last time. I’d like to think I’m in better control of my powers now, but it’s just... Well, it won’t be fun.
It’s weird, though. I have to admit, it’s really getting to me now. That whole stuff I’ve been talking about with the power of narrative; everything that has to do with that has been percolating in my head for a long time now. That’s a good word, huh? “Percolating.” The more into this I get, the more absurd I realize it is. This goes beyond a simple Minecraft server, I already knew that. It even goes beyond the probably ludicrous amount of plugins this server has. You can’t have a godmodder through plugins. You can’t have that Void expedition through plugins. I literally took another trip to Aperture Science to get Her on my side and She’s genuinely in the game right now. How could that possibly be through plugins? And this FEZ, this Glitch, the shattering of the Hexahedron, is really just the final set of nails in an already stuffed coffin.
It’s impossible to ignore now. Destroy the Godmodder is making things that shouldn’t be real real. Anything the players of the game do, actually happens. It happens in a computer game, on a Minecraft server, but it superimposes itself onto reality. I know I sound crazy, and I know how absolutely idiotic this whole thing is. But you have to believe me. It’s like they have just as much power over the story as TT2000 himself does. But TT2000 doesn’t even really interact with the actual Minecraft server, yet he’s just omnipresent in the forum game. It’s like there’s two versions of all these people at once, two Destroy the Godmodders existing simultaneously. It’s a bootstrap paradox, a narrative conjuring itself from nothing, from my perspective. It keeps feeding on itself infinitely, creating new paths and forging ahead to some kind of ending.
I took Aperture Science and plugged it into Destroy the Godmodder and all of a sudden GLaDOS and Her Turret Army are plot-relevant. I used my Far Lands powers to tear a portal through the world and found a discarded FEZ floating through the ether and pulled it out, and now the Hexahedron and the Glitch are plot-relevant. Chuck Norris, Team Fortress 2 weaponry, Star Wars drones and ships, giant, grotesque forms of Minecraft’s normal monsters, and so much more are just consistently thrown around, willy-nilly, inserting themselves into the narrative seamlessly.
I don’t know what it would look like from your perspective, as an outsider looking in. But as an insider looking out, it’s not just a simple elaborate fan fiction crossover. It’s countless stories colliding and combining and rewriting themselves, all because of the actions of a set of people typing away at their computers, pretending they’re playing a Minecraft game and then somehow actually playing that same game in this world. Destroy the Godmodder is a story about stories. It’s telling itself, it’s playing itself. But how? How can that even be possible? I know anything can technically be possible here, I know this world works on its own set of rules with its own set of differences, but...
How easy is it really to make a narrative? TT2000 is. He’s doing it in our world. The real world. Countless people are doing it there. Whether it’s huge unstoppable blockbusters, or spoken-word ghost stories passed down at campfires, or 18+ fanfics. But this if the first time I’ve ever seen what that... entails. What a story actually looks like when you’re... inside of it.
I think… I think I’m living in a fictional universe. Not just some random alternate dimension. A universe that is literally being written by the people up with you. A universe that is writing itself. A cosmology that I never thought I could piece together, but I... somehow am. What the hell is happening? Does anyone even know? ...Do I?
Stay tuned,
Adam
7/1/13
█████,
I couldn’t sleep. I could not sleep at all. I have not slept one wink since I went to bed. I was tossing and turning under the covers and the red light from my glasses kept reminding me of you and of home and of all the stars that I’d never get to see again because of the ever-present light pollution that reminds me of how feebly tiny my world of fiction is. But the point being, the fact of the matter presenting itself, is that I could not sleep. And I couldn’t sleep because I had a breakthrough. I feel like I’m just writing every single one of my thoughts down right now and they’re all slurring together because, well, see aforementioned lack of sleep. So I’m trying and failing to get to the point and I hope you bear with me.
I realized something. Like, genuinely realized something, to the point that I think I’ve broken through some grand mental barrier I’d conjured for myself, ostensibly to keep me from going insane in the face of how clearly bastardized this fictional plane is. I should have cracked a million times over by now. Shut up, I haven’t. I totally haven’t cracked. I’m as cool as a cucumber right now. A very green, very sweaty cucumber. And I am green, make no doubt about that. I’ve been cursed with this green jacket ever since I slammed into the cold Manhattan asphalt. Landing down like that was essentially the only thing I actually felt in between that moment and running desperately for home and touching all those people that I passed through and making them disappear into a multicolored oblivion.
Uh. Whoops. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. I probably shouldn’t have, I think you’d get mad at me if I did, I know I’d get mad at me if I were you and I did. I think you should get mad at me for it. Please get mad at me for it. When you read this letter tomorrow or whenever it is I get back — I’m not saying if I get back because I absolutely will get back and this is not negotiable I refuse to accept the idea that I can’t go back because that would be a perversion and defilement of my inalienable rights as a player of the vaunted experience that is the destruction of a modified god — I want you to strike down upon me with great vengeance and furious anger. Can I say I’ve killed people? I kind of want to phrase it that way to hammer home how awful my actions are, but I don’t really think I can say it in that way. It wouldn’t be fair. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t watch the life fade from their eyes as I actively attacked them with my own hands, forcing them, forcing everyone to notice me and to SEE how significant I am. I just made them stop existing. Like they were never even there.
Sorry. I lied. I lied back then. I told you I stopped after that one guy, and I didn’t touch anyone else until I left the city. Well, it’s a funny story about that, really. There were multiple. I don’t know how much, and I don’t want to say how much, because I feel like I’d hate myself more if I did. And besides, I don’t even know how much, really. Because I made myself forget. Because I can make myself forget. I realized it recently. I don’t know if I realized it before. I think some of the repressed memories are slipping through, because I... really haven’t been getting much sleep, if I’m being honest. And I am! I’m on an honesty streak. The constant fighting and stress probably has a lot to do with it too. But yes. Yes! I can’t do it anymore, probably because I’ve anchored myself a lot better in this world in the intervening months, but back then, when barely anything knew I existed, it was easy. EASY. TRIVIAL. I could do it without trying. And it was messy and volatile and horrific, and it never worked quite the way I thought it would, but it was something.
...God. Wow. Sorry. Blinked for a second there, for a pretty long second, and realized how crazy I was acting. I barely even know what I was talking about, anyway. Still incredibly tired, though, and very likely prone to saying things that I shouldn’t be saying. So let me just give you that realization I had and leave you alone. Probably forever. Hopefully not forever. I miss you too much to ghost you like this. Look. Destroy the Godmodder is a story writing itself. The creator and the participants have a say in the way it goes. And it is a story writing itself into existence, currently. It has a tangible, demonstrable effect on reality. My Far Lands powers. GLaDOS. Yeah. GLaDOS is gone. She’s dead. Has been ever since She “died” in the “game.” Quotation marks necessary, because the hard line between fiction and fact is more like sludge at this point.
But... but. There’s something else with that quality, too. That level of collaboration, of participation, of layers, stacking themselves up and up open themselves into a story the likes of which I’ve never seen before. It’s Homestuck. It’s always been Homestuck. A story created by a visionary whose fans, whose participants, directed its flow in tandem with the original author. An author who locked himself in his own story even while he was directing it himself. A story where the characters are capable of referencing, seeing, and interacting with the reader. A story that exists in said sludge between fiction and fact.
I think Homestuck and Destroy the Godmodder are connected. If this really is a fictional universe being made by someone up there, then Homestuck... which is, in the actual story, a fictional universe being directed by someone within it who represents someone up there... Does Homestuck actually exist, too? Like, in here? With me? I don’t know. I don’t know and I think there’s more too this that I haven’t even figured out yet, but... I just don’t know.
I’m sorry for the rambling. This is just... very important to me.
Stay tuned,
Adam
8/22/13
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