The essence of the Overseer is gone, the suited figure with no head quietly said. Though he had no mouth, and no actual head save for a swirling chasm, his words cut through the void. It was stolen. Eaten. By an... an egg. A white blithering idiot of an egg. I... I thought you should know. The room’s other occupant was a shimmering floating tesseract that was quite small — it could have fit in palm of the figure’s hand — and was constantly spinning in on itself in a kaleidoscopic manner, creating soft twinkling sounds as it did so.
“You’re right. I... I can feel it. I can feel the cosmos spinning out of control.” The suited figure nodded. Our realm has been on a collision course with the apocalypse for years now. But now, with this recent development, even I can’t predict what will happen at the End of Man. The tesseract floated around the room. “This is awful... Dreadfully awful. Without even the passive supervision of METATRON, the Impartation Simulation will grind to a halt in time. If the Hexahedron breaks, good luck putting that thing back together! The code of reality is going to rot from the inside out! Black holes at every corner! Geometry will lack meaning!!”
The suited figure held his hand. Yes, yes. I’m fully aware of what that entails. Total obliteration of reality by the time the End of Man rolls around. It’s funny. I would have thought you’d be the first to know. The tesseract laughed. “Oh, no one ever tells me anything anymore. Ditzy old Dot, they say! Your memory’s so awful, and you’re so unreliable, why should we come to you when we have Navi to help us? Or Siri?? Why leave out me, the Ur-example of a tutorial!?” Ocarina of Time was released before FEZ, Dot, the figure said quietly. “So?? From a Nonfictional point of view, yeah! But no one in here remembers me either! Me, one of the oldest beings in Fiction!” The tesseract shrunk to a corner of the room, sighing to herself. “It’s... not fair.” The figure walked over to her and knelt, putting a hand on her spinning figure before moving it away after experiencing nausea. How close were you with Him? The Overseer? The tesseract laughed. “I always called Him METATRON. He was cool with it. I watched Him build that Simulation from the ground-up, forging such important ideas... The concept of refinement, of tetrominoes, of the Parliament... It was groundbreaking! Trend-setting! And I was always there, by his side, helping Him! Me and my trillion trillion trillion copies are all in that Simulation, somewhere. It’s tesseracts all the way up, you know! All stacked together to carefully form a layer of static — an incomprehensible barrier!”
Chuckling, the suited figure stood up. I thought you said you didn’t know anything. The tesseract spun around excitedly. “Oh, there’s lots I don’t know about the Simulation itself! Like what’s up with the Monolith! And why the heart cubes exist! And some of the really complicated puzzles! They’re always so confusing!” And yet you understand the great game of Narrative-Conflict relations like the back of a hand. You’re a clairvoyant of plot, and you’re stumped by a simple puzzle in a simulation? The tesseract floated towards the edge of the room. “Ah well, you know me... I’m prone to crashing, and all that... That’s what you get when you deal with a geezer like me, huh? I’m such an old model that I’m practically the buggiest thing alive!” The suited figure looked at his pocket watch and tilted his head back slightly. The door to the room had been locked tight. “It’s funny, you know… I never really thought He died. Back then, when His physical form was obliterated. The conqueror’s choice…...To preserve His soul rather than to take it… It really kept Him alive in my eyes. I made sure to thank him for it... But that’s all gone now. I don’t even have His soul to remember Him by…” The suited figure turned the other way. “Even the Council of Nine bound some of their dragon’s essence to a lock. We have nothing now.” The suited figure turned away, looking at the ground. Our relationship has always been peculiar to me. A piece of the Conflict, being friends with an agent of order. It seems contradictory, yet... The tesseract bounced up and down. “You and I both know we want the same thing, no matter what we serve! A better reality... One free from corruption and instability. It’s what He would have wanted. It’s what He always wanted.”
The suited figure nodded, and the two sat in silence for some time. They stared at the window lining the wall of the room, watching as the blue pyramid spun through the Void, a chipped statue of an Owl at its capstone. The stars of the Void twinkled in patterns neither of them could see. The suited figure unceremoniously broke the silence. Do you have any heads for me? The tesseract jumped up. “Oh! Yes! Silly me, I almost forgot.” The four-dimensional tesseract bent at a right angle to all of space, sliding inwards. They formed a shimmering kaleidoscopic cube. Another universal push, and they flattened into a square. Yet another, and they became a line. Then, with a resounding boom, the tesseract became a dot. A dot that opened up into a hole given time, a hole cutting itself clean through reality.
Falling through from the other side was a warrior decked out in shimmering armor. A helmet obscured their face, and their sword was lit with green flame. When they regained their footing, they jumped back at the sight of the suited figure. Unsheathing their sword and running forward, they screamed in a foreign tongue while the suited figure tunneled into the warrior’s mind. At once, the warrior fell to the floor, their brain suffering through multiple seizures as the suited figure commented harshly on every action the warrior took throughout their insignificant life. In a matter of seconds, the warrior grew still. Smoky, abyssal tendrils unwound from the figure’s swirling head. They cleanly detached the warrior’s head from his body, leaving a flowing pool of pitch-black voidmatter. The warrior’s head fit perfectly in the voided hole of the figure’s head, and it spoke through its steel helmet. “Pyrrhic victories, pyrrhic wars.” The dot unfolded back into a tesseract, shuddering slightly. “Tetrarch Viridian, a swordfighter under the tutelage of Het Hemera’s descendants. They passed through an event horizon while traveling through the Void on a hoverboard. I found them there, stuck in time.” The suited figure nodded once, the helmet rolling up into nonexistence as the typical voided hole returned. Much appreciated. Now, he said, looking again at his watch, I should be leaving.
“You sure? I mean, we could reminiscence on the Overseer some more...!” The suited figure shook his head. The recent past has been recalled. I don’t have much more to say. But I’ll be back, and I’ll need you. My subordinate... Cipher... This is all his fault. Him and his egghead friend... I’ll make them pay. The suited figure’s hands clenched into fists, the void swirling around his head spinning with agitation. I’ll make sure of it. In one swift motion, the suited figure opened the door, stepped through, and shut it, leaving the tesseract to spin on its own. “O-okay then! See you later!” There was an uncomfortable silence. “I really need to work on my timing.”
< 3.3: DEVIL'S IN A FINE SUIT | 3.4: TESSERACTS ALL THE WAY UP | 3.5: STATE YOUR NAME AND RANK >