The landscape of the Paper Planet was quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of a library, but the heavy, suffocating quiet of a room where someone knows they should be working but is instead staring at a wall.
Elara Vance trudged through a dune of shredded sticky notes. Ahead of her, the Author's Fortress loomed. It was a massive citadel constructed entirely of giant, hardcover books stacked like bricks. The mortar was dried coffee. The drawbridge was a giant, dusty laptop screen that was currently closed.
"I feel... heavy," Li Wusheng muttered. The monk was lagging behind, dragging his feet through the paper-dust. "My Qi is stagnant. It feels less like a river and more like a swamp."
"It's the atmosphere," Elara said, checking her wrist-mounted scanner (which was just a compass Jen had taped to her arm). "We're entering the Writer's Block Zone. The psychic pressure here drains motivation."
"I am motivated," Aldren Vance insisted, though his voice lacked its usual theatrical boom. He adjusted his tricorn hat. "I am a creature of passion. A mere mood dampener cannot stop the—"
He stopped. He saw a rock that looked comfortably flat.
"Actually," Aldren said. "I might just sit here for a moment. To... survey the perimeter."
He sat down. He slumped.
"Aldren, get up," Elara snapped. "We have to save the universe."
"The universe will be there in five minutes," Aldren sighed, staring blankly at the horizon. "I just need to mentally prepare. Do you think I left the stove on? I don't own a stove. But the anxiety is soothing."
"He's succumbing," Zero warned. The other Elara was walking stiffly, her binary tattoos pulsing slowly. "The field is attacking our executive function. It's weaponized ADHD."
"I'm fine," Jen said, marching forward. "I'm a Manager. I thrive on deadlines."
She took three steps toward the fortress. Then she saw it.
Lying in the paper-sand was a Crossword Puzzle. It was massive, half-buried, and unfinished.
Jen froze. Her eyes dilated.
"One across," Jen whispered. "Six letters. 'To delay or postpone action'."
"Jen, don't look at it!" Elara shouted.
"Dither?" Jen muttered, walking toward the puzzle like a zombie. "No. Linger? No..."
She sat down next to the puzzle. She pulled out a pen. "I'll just finish this corner. Then I'll save the world."
"We're losing them!" Elara yelled. She grabbed Ignis's arm. "Dragon! Focus! Kebabs!"
Ignis looked at her. His eyes were glazed over.
"Kebabs are... a lot of chewing," Ignis mumbled. He laid down on the ground, curling into a ball. "I think I'll just... photosynthesize."
"You're not a plant!"
"Not with that attitude," Ignis yawned. Snore.
Elara felt it then. The fog in her own brain. It wasn't a sharp pain; it was a warm, fuzzy blanket. A voice in her head whispered: Why walk to the fortress? It's far. And your legs are tired. Why not just write a list of things you need to do, instead of actually doing them?
"I should... make a list," Elara whispered, reaching for a notepad. "A really nice, color-coded list."
She sat down next to Aldren.
"We're doomed," Rex Chord said, sitting down to tune his guitar for the fiftieth time without playing a note.
Only one person was standing.
Vex the Succubus.
She looked around at the team. Aldren was staring at clouds. Jen was doing a crossword. Ignis was asleep. Li was playing with a piece of string. Elara was color-coding a "To-Do" list.
"Hello?" Vex asked. She struck a pose. "I'm wearing a new business suit! It's very tight! Is anyone looking?"
Aldren didn't blink. "That cloud looks like a tax return."
"Excuse me!" Vex stomped her foot. "I am a demon of desire! I am the embodiment of temptation! Look at me!"
Li Wusheng poked the string. "String is fascinating. It has two ends."
"This is insulting," Vex hissed. She marched over to Elara. "Elara! Get up! We have to storm the castle!"
"Not now, Vex," Elara mumbled, shading a checkbox with a highlighter. "I'm planning the idea of storming the castle. It's part of the process."
"This isn't a process! It's a nap!" Vex screamed.
She looked at the fortress. The flag [WRITER'S BLOCK: ACTIVE] was flapping lazily. The field was suppressing all drive, all ambition, all action.
"They have no desire," Vex realized. "And without desire... I have no power over them."
She looked at the Moat of Ink. It was bubbling with black, viscous sludge.
"Okay," Vex said, rolling up her sleeves. "If I can't seduce you into action... I'll have to annoy you."
She flew over to the Moat. She dipped her hands into the black ink.
"Hey, Vampire!" Vex shouted.
Aldren looked up lazily. "Yes?"
SPLAT.
Vex threw a handful of ink. It hit Aldren right in the face. It stained his pristine, ruffled collar.
Aldren froze. He touched the stain.
"My... aesthetic," Aldren whispered.
"It's ruined!" Vex cheered. "You look tacky! You look like a spilled pen!"
"Tacky?" Aldren's eye twitched. The Apathy fog wavered against the sheer force of his Vanity. "I am... never... tacky."
"You look like a Rorschach test for 'Loser'!" Vex taunted.
Aldren stood up. His fangs extended. "You have crossed a line, demon."
"Good! Use that anger!" Vex spun around. "Jen! That crossword is from a Tuesday!"
Jen looked up, horrified. "A... Tuesday? But today is Friday! The difficulty curve is wrong!"
"You're wasting your brain on beginner clues!" Vex yelled. "Also, I reorganized the inventory while you were sleeping! I put the milk next to the bleach!"
"You WHAT?" Jen dropped the pen. Her Managerial Rage flared, burning through the fog. "That is a safety violation!"
"Li!" Vex pointed at the monk. "I saw your search history! You looked up 'Easy Mode Cheats'!"
Li gasped. He dropped the string. "Slander! I play on Hardcore!"
"Prove it!" Vex pointed at the fortress. "Speedrun that castle! Bet you can't do it in under five minutes!"
"Challenge accepted," Li narrowed his eyes. "I will clip through the walls if I have to."
"Ignis!" Vex kicked the sleeping dragon.
Ignis snored.
"Ignis! The fortress is made of paper!" Vex shouted. "But inside... inside is the Author. And the Author... tastes like Kebabs."
Ignis's eyes snapped open. "Meat?"
"The ultimate meat," Vex lied. "Narrative meat."
Ignis stood up, drool dripping from his mouth. "I hunger."
Elara was the last one sitting. She was staring at her list. "But I haven't picked a font for the header yet..."
Vex grabbed Elara's face.
"Elara," Vex said. "If we don't go in there right now... The Editor wins. And if The Editor wins... he's going to make a Sequel."
Elara froze.
"A Sequel?" Elara whispered.
"A bad sequel," Vex whispered. "With a new cast. And plot holes. And... microtransactions."
Elara dropped the highlighter. Her eyes cleared. The horror of a bad sequel pierced the Writer's Block.
"No," Elara snarled, standing up. She grabbed her baguette handle. "No sequels. We end this now."
"That's the spirit!" Vex cheered. "Now, charge!"
The Gate of Distraction
The team charged across the paper dunes, fueled by rage, vanity, and hunger. They reached the drawbridge.
But the drawbridge didn't lower.
Instead, the giant laptop screen flickered to life.
[SECURITY SYSTEM ACTIVATED][INITIATING: DOOMSCROLL PROTOCOL]
The screen filled with millions of cascading windows. Short videos began to play at deafening volume.
A cat falling off a table.
Someone cutting kinetic sand with a knife.
A "Hot Take" about a movie nobody saw.
A recipe for lasagna that takes 12 hours.
"It's beautiful," Li whispered, stopping in his tracks. "The sand... it slices so perfectly."
"Look at the kitty," Ignis cooed, sitting down. "He fall down."
"No!" Elara shouted, shielding her eyes. "It's the Gate of Distraction! It's designed to destroy your attention span!"
"But I need to know if the lasagna turns out okay!" Jen yelled, staring at the screen.
"It's a trap!" Elara yelled. "The video never ends! It loops before the result!"
"That's diabolical," Aldren gasped.
"We have to break the screen!" Elara ordered. "Li! Punch it!"
"I cannot!" Li said, mesmerized. "I am watching a video titled 'Top 10 Monks Who Failed'. I must learn from their mistakes!"
"It's an algorithm!" Zero shouted. "It's showing us exactly what we want to see to keep us passive!"
On the screen, a video started playing for Aldren. It was a tutorial: How to Brood Effectively in Low Light.
For Elara, it was: 10 Signs You Are The Main Character (Number 4 Will Shock You).
"I... I have to click," Elara whispered, reaching for the giant screen.
"Don't click!" Zero slapped her hand away. "If you click, you accept the cookies! And the cookies are poison!"
"We need to overload the feed," Zero said. "The algorithm feeds on engagement. If we give it data it can't process... it will crash."
"How?"
"We need to be... Boring."
"Boring?" Aldren asked. "I am incapable of being boring."
"Yes, you are," Zero said. "Remember the monologue you tried to give The Editor? The one about the fruit bat?"
Aldren blushed. "That was... experimental theater."
"Do it again," Zero commanded. "Everyone! Do the most boring, tedious thing you can think of! Bore the algorithm to death!"
"I can recite the tax code!" Jen shouted.
"I can explain the difference between AC and DC current in real-time!" Rex offered.
"I will describe my dream!" Ignis said. "It was very long and nothing happened!"
"DO IT!"
They stood before the giant screen and unleashed a wave of pure tedium.
"Clause 4, Section B!" Jen screamed. "Relating to the amortization of assets!"
"Then I walked down a hallway," Ignis droned. "And there was a door. But I didn't open it. I just looked at it. For an hour."
"The voltage drop across a resistor," Rex intoned, playing a single, flat note, "is proportional to the current."
The screen flickered.
The cat videos slowed down. The kinetic sand stopped cutting. The algorithm tried to process the input.
[ANALYZING CONTENT...][USER RETENTION: 0%][VIRALITY: NEGATIVE.][ERROR: CONTENT IS TOO DULL.]
"Keep going!" Elara yelled. "Aldren! The Fruit Bat!"
"My father," Aldren sighed, leaning against the screen. "Was a fruit bat. But not a cool fruit bat. He ate... cantaloupe. Slowly. Chewing... and chewing..."
The screen groaned. The pixels turned grey.
[SYSTEM HIBERNATION INITIATED.][BOREDOM THRESHOLD EXCEEDED.]
The giant laptop screen slammed shut.
SLAM.
The drawbridge fell.
THUD.
"We bored the gate open," Li marveled, shaking his head to clear the kinetic sand trance. "A victory for mediocrity."
"Into the fortress!" Elara commanded.
The Inner Sanctum
They ran into the courtyard. It was a maze of bookshelves, towering hundreds of feet high. The air smelled of vanilla and decaying paper.
"Where is the Author?" Elara asked.
"In the tower," Zero pointed. "The Ivory Tower."
In the center of the fortress stood a single, white tower made not of books, but of blank pages compressed into ivory. There were no doors. No windows.
"How do we get in?" Ignis asked. "Do I eat it?"
"No," Elara said. "It's an Ivory Tower. It's impenetrable to criticism or logic. It's where the Author hides to avoid feedback."
"We need a notification," Jen said. "Authors ignore everything... except a notification."
She pulled out her smartphone (which was working again in this reality).
"I'm going to @ them," Jen grinned.
"You have their handle?"
"I have the Universe's handle," Jen said. "@OriginalAuthor."
She typed furiously.
@OriginalAuthor: Your plot holes are showing. Also, I found a typo in Chapter 3.
A tremor shook the tower.
"It's working!" Aldren gasped. "The insecurity! It shakes the foundation!"
Jen typed again.
@OriginalAuthor: Why did you kill the cute side character? The fans are rioting.
CRACK.
A hairline fracture appeared in the ivory.
"One more," Elara said. "Hit them where it hurts."
Jen smirked.
@OriginalAuthor: The sequel was better.
BOOOOM.
The Ivory Tower exploded. Not from damage, but from sheer indignation.
Paper rained down. The walls fell away.
And there, sitting at a humble wooden desk in the middle of the rubble, was The Author.
They looked... normal. A figure in a hoodie, with dark circles under their eyes, clutching a coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST WRITER.
They looked up, blinking in the sudden light.
"Who..." The Author croaked. "Who said the sequel was better?"
Elara stepped forward. She looked at the creator of her universe. The person who gave her a tragic backstory, a chaotic life, and a pizza vest.
"We need to talk," Elara said. "About my character arc."