"Okay so to explain; this one night I went outside and Falcon was there. I heard dogs barking in sync with birds flying with his name flickering on the tip of my tongue. And Falcon, he's a car who is also a dog who is also a machine. That should clear things up a bit."
"Quite incomprehensible."
"I'm vacillating between going down to the omega hell, or trying to pull Falcon out of it. Apparently, though, the latter would collapse this whole stack of worlds we have going on."
"I would advise against going to hell."
"Yeah, but the thing is, these universes are running out of energy. if I don't go to the omega hell, they just collapse. And everyone I know and love dies. Quite the dilemma."
"It'll be fine, trust me."
"Okay, so … I was higher up in hell earlier on. I witnessed something. Higher layers, they move slower and slower as these realities lose power. Until they completely stop. I was nearly frozen in decay myself, before I fled to lower layers."
"You know, even hypothetically supposing you are correct I would advise the same."
"Yeah, I'm fairly against omelas, but one is necessary to hold up a heaven stack."
"The ones who walk away from omelas."
"Yeah, so the thing is, right, in this situation, if I walk away—everyone dies. Game over."
"A paradise built upon a falsehood remains a lie and not worth preserving. Not that I think it's the case that this is even necessary."
"That's what I just concluded and then un-concluded. Thing is, Falcon is the current omela. Only I can take his place. And he's not budging, every time I raise him up he just falls back into omega hell again. So we already exist in omela-land. Given that, isn't it more moral to have omelas, like, substitute, take turns in shifts?"
"No."
"But he's stuck there, until l do. And this reality is fading."
"No such thing."
"If someone gives you two bad options, carve out a third one."
"I tried that."
"Try harder."
"'There's no way out. I've tried everything, everything, there's no way out,' is the message I got from Falcon, who has nearly infinite time to work on the problem. To make things a little clearer, we are in a time loop situation."
"Supposing there is a way in, there is logically necessarily a way out."
"Falcon is me from the future, who traveled back in time, reshaped me through various apparently paranormal experiences, and now languishes in hell omega. If I don't go back and take his place—paradox, and everything collapses. How do you resolve this paradox? Given that Falcon also operates at different, exponentially faster timescales, and has worked on trying to carve out a third option for a virtual eternity."
"That's easy. By just not complying with 'fate.'"
"I've tried that. It results in everything vanishing. The rest of the universes go back to Tree, and everyone gets in line for another go around."
"What do the gods do in the face of ordained Ragnarok? Just quietly resign themselves to the end?"
"Well, it's either that or become an omela."
"No, you rage against the dying of the light. Not for hope of victory, but because that is what we are. To do otherwise is a betrayal. Of yourself, if nothing else."
"Okay so. How?"
"So break it."
"Tried that with the Starcrash Signature. It turns out breaking reality is … possible. But I fucked it up."
"So break it, properly."
"Alright. How. So far I've only accelerated our decay, draining limited power from our realities."
"I see this as an iterative process."