Zero Impossibility

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Zero Impossibility; My end-of-year Creative Writing major piece.
Tweet Topic Started: Sep 19 2010, 09:22 PM (174 Views)
Lord Tora Unlimited Crusader	Sep 19 2010, 09:22 PM Post #1
【The Knight of Tigers 】 Posts: 5,462 Group: Former Monarchs Member #6,733 Joined: March 17, 2008 Gender: Male Country: Australia 3DS Friend Code: 0404-6433-6113 Steam ID: crusaderandtimothy	This here's my major piece for my Creative Writing class this year. It's a little clipped and rushed, but only 'cause we've got a 4000 word limit; the original work would've been easily 8000... I'm sad to see a lot of that material go, especially since I lost the unedited document with my corrupted USB. No directors cut for YOU. Ah well. Anyways, feedback is welcome as ever. More importantly, enjoy! <LOADING... LOADING... LOADING... Actually, this is a very boring loading screen. We sould have put more chocolate in it, since We are partial to sweets like that. Alas, We didn't write this piece; We're just putting in this bit as a segue between TUC's blabberings and his actual story- Oops! We've gone a bit further than We intended! Sorry. LOADING... LOADING... LOADING...> One would think that the power to create and alter their own miniature universe is a pretty fun power to have. One would be right in this assumption, of course. I recall my life before I discovered I had this ability; a daily struggle to find adventure and stimulation in a bland, ordinary world that imposed its oppressive rules of ‘the status quo’, ‘law over ethics’, ‘getting a job’ and a general suppression of deviance from the seemingly writ-in-stone way a person’s life ‘should’ be. I hated the world and its stifling normality. I wanted strangeness and excitement, like the stuff you read in books and see in film and TV! I wanted magic and superpowers! I wanted to meet ESPers, aliens and time-travellers! Then, one day, I got my wish; I fell asleep from sheer boredom and somehow ‘fell’ into a little bubble of sub-reality made from my own imagination. Whatever triggered my latent ability, I’ll never know, unless it was simply a case of just being so bored that my common sense unhinged enough that I decided I’d bend reality... and have it subsequently work. Since then, I’ve lived two lives; one in my ‘mindscape’, exploring the power of fantasy, having the sort of fun that only fiction-made-real can provide, and one in the real world, keeping up appearances, carrying on as normal, all for the sake of not abandoning my friends and family. In an attempt to keep the two worlds separate, I never use my real name in the mindscape, makes it easier to keep my ability secret in the real world if I sort of disassociate myself from it, I guess. Instead, I adopted the moniker of ‘Crusader’, a pen-name/username I’ve had for years. Sure, it’s not a very ‘natural’ name, but it holds sentimental significance for me, and besides, it’s perfectly normal alongside some of the other stuff in the mindscape. Call me a spoilt, over-enthusiastic author writing a tale for the sake of entertaining his own fancies. Face it; if you were given complete power over reality, your world would be no less indulgent than mine. Such is the folly of the human mind, I guess; absolute power corrupts absolutely, though whether said corruption is inherently good or evil is perhaps the wrong question to be asking. It’s been a long time since all that began. I’ve almost completely left the real world behind, preferring to remain in the sanctuary of my own creation. So much has happened over the years – heck, I’ve almost died at least five or six times. But throughout it all, no adventure was quite as incredible as the first time the mindscape was attacked... The Tower was my ‘residence’ in the mindscape. The whole thing was hard to describe really; it was a cross between a science-fiction skyscraper and an architect’s nightmare with staircases, blocks of rooms and even entire floors at strange angles to the rest of the building and, in some cases, apparently not even connected to the structure itself, floating around the Tower on a slow orbit. The section at the base of the North Wing, however, was where I spent most of my time; it was a huge hangar-slash-construction facility that reached across five whole floors, its gargantuan dimensions specifically designed to accommodate large-scale projects such as airships, massive humanoid war machines (because Super Robots are fun to build, even if they don’t see any use) and mobile buildings. Of course, smaller projects took place there too, things that had proven far more useful than the larger things I’d built out of sheer boredom. On that particular day, the facility was accommodating my latest project; a massive starship designed to penetrate the outer walls of the mindscape and travel into the void between dimensional planes. I called it the ‘ExDiVER’, short for ‘Extra-Dimensional Vessel for Exploration and Research’. Currently, it was incomplete on account of my inability to create a jump-drive capable of shifting the craft out-of-phase with the mindscape. As long as that obstacle existed, it would simply bounce off the illusory horizon that encircled my world. With most of the Tower’s other occupants – all characters born from my imagination, of course – out enjoying the artificial summer, the only company I had to aid me in my tinkering was one of my personal aide androids; Cassandra, my second-in-command who sported purple hair and eyes, a naval dress uniform and a constant expression so deadpan it would make veteran poker players burst into tears. The two of us were running a test on the newest prototype ExDiVER engine when Cass suddenly looked up from her work, fixing her customarily unblinking gaze on me. “Sir, my sensors have detected a rapid temporal acceleration in the Engineering Bay.” ‘A rapid temporal acceleration’... In other words, molecules suddenly growing really old really fast. That did not bode well. We quickly made our way off the ship, though if Cassandra’s report was correct, we were probably already too late to stop whatever it was from happening. The first thing I noticed upon entering the labs was an inexplicable feeling, akin to the sound of two slabs of steel grinding against one another in my head, a grating shudder of resistance that raced through every nerve in my body. The second thing I noticed was the white-haired man in the middle of the room, standing amidst a field of shimmering air that caused my eyes to ache. I’d never encountered anything like this before, but I instinctively knew; that shimmer was the after-effects of two realities momentarily colliding, and the stranger had been deposited here in the process. “Halt, intruder,” Cassandra ordered, levelling both hands at the man, “Lay down your armaments and identify yourself, or be-” “‘Forcibly subdued’?” the stranger smirked, “Just you try it, Cass.” That got me curious; how did he know Cass’s name, and furthermore, how was he able to predict her speech patterns like that? Unless... “Oh dear,” I uttered. “You look like you’ve never seen a time-traveller before, kiddo,” the stranger remarked, “But then again, time-travel never was that easy to pull off.” Cassandra frowned as the man approached, eyeing him suspiciously. “I repeat; halt-” “Shoot me then,” the stranger said calmly, patting his chest with one hand, “Put those gun fingers to good use and take your best shot.” The android set her jaw and sighted down her arms at him for a moment. And then, her eyes widening in the closest thing to shock I’d ever seen her express, she lowered her hands. “... Unable to comply,” she replied, the barest hint of disbelief in her tone. “Action endangers Crusader.” “Well, Crusader in another decade or so.” “I love what you’ve done with your hair,” I remarked, “Much messier than mine, not to mention you’ve gone completely white. The years haven’t treated you... er, me well.” “No. They haven’t,” he said simply. “How did you even travel through time in the first place? I thought it was impossible without something like an infinitely-extending Tipler Cylinder or something like that.” “Actually,” Future-Crusader replied, “My way was much simpler. I devised a theory based off the uncertainty principle, which I’ve dubbed the ‘zero impossibility theory’. Effectively, it states that there is no such thing as impossibility, only varying degrees of improbability.” “How very Douglas Adams of you.” “Once I believed my theory to be true, reality changed to accommodate it. I then used my reality-bending influence to expand the probability window of me spontaneously falling through time to this point in the timeline until it just happened.” “So basically,” I commented, arching one eyebrow, “It’s a glorified magician’s tablecloth trick, with time as the tablecloth and logic as the undisturbed teacups.” “Precisely. It’s all in the wrist.” “Mindscaping – the power to create universes from our imaginations – is not ours alone. There are other Mindscapers out there, the most dangerous one I’ve encountered thus far being one Cain Blake. He will contact you within the hour and declare war.” My future-self began detailing the reasons for his time-travel as soon as we had found seats in the ExDiVER’s bridge – he had insisted that it was the kind of conversation that shouldn’t be had standing up, and I was inclined to agree at this point. “In my timeline, I created a shield around the mindscape and made it move through superdimensional space until I was far away from him. However, that was only a minor setback for Cain; he attacked other mindscapes until they all fell under his control, and then... He moved onto the real world. With the power of dozens of Mindscapers and their imaginations under his command, it became all too easy. And, once he conquered every dimensional plane in Creation, he came looking for me once again. This time, there was nowhere to run. That’s why I decided to travel back in time; if I had fought instead of fled when he first approached me, perhaps I could have stopped him.” In the silence that followed, the ExDiVER’s command console gave a small beep. “Incoming transmission,” the automated voice reported. My future-self frowned in response. “It’s beginning,” he said, “Sooner than I expected, too.” I swivelled around in my chair and gave the command to patch the transmission through; the monitor shone into life, displaying the face of a boy who couldn’t have been much older than me. He was wearing all black, with a leather trenchcoat – Is he trying to pull off the Matrix look? I wondered – with messy red hair and, even more disturbingly, eyes the very same shade of crimson. “Salutations!” he exclaimed, “My name is Cain Blake, and I will be your boss monster today! Might I have the privilege to know the name of the person’s game I’ll be ending?” Did this guy really take himself that seriously? “My name is Crusader,” I responded coldly, “and I don’t appreciate being threatened.” “’Crusader’? That’s a dumb alias. Doesn’t matter; I’m just here to take your mindscape. My scouts found out you don’t have much of an army, and not even superdimensional jump-drive technology yet. Guess that’ll make it all the easier for me to win, I guess.” “We’ve done nothing to provoke this attack, so stop now while you’re still ahead.” “Stop?” he replied, “This is the best game ever! Why would I stop? Besides, this isn’t about you; you’re just a casual player who doesn’t take this power seriously! Once I’ve beat you, I’ll just keep going until all of Creation is mine! Well, I’ve got an invasion to plan. Laters, Crusader.” My rival’s face vanished from the screen as I turned around to face the rest of the room’s occupants. His megalomaniac speech was already ticking me off, but to think he was treating this like some kind of game? That pushed me over the edge. “Let’s show this arrogant bastard what a ‘casual player’ can really do,” I said, “Future-me, I’ve got a plan, but we need to go somewhere first.” “I will accompany you, sir,” Cassandra stated immediately, stepping forward. “Thought you might say that,” I replied with a sigh, “In any case, this is one fight you can’t protect me from, Cass; Cain would tear you to bits in an instant.” I gestured at the holographic map of the mindscape and added, “You’re my second-in-command, so in my absence I want you to organise our forces. Get everyone you can get in contact with to fall back to the Tower and defend it until I get back, alright?” The android stared at me for a few seconds, and then nodded. “Yes sir,” she said. Was there a note of reluctance in her voice, or was I thinking about it too much? Well, there was no time to mull it over further. My future-self and I had somewhere more important to be. Long ago, the manifestation of my darker impulses (a hybrid of the Freudian archetypes of the Shadow and the Id) fought against me for control of the mindscape – and by extension, my mind – and lost. I’d sealed him away in an underground catacomb which I called the ‘Mausoleum von Nacht’, or ‘Mausoleum of Night’. At the time, I thought I’d never have to see him again... yet once again, I found myself walking towards the dais upon which he stood, wreathed in darkness. He’s as theatrical as I am, I mused, Though his tastes are a little clichéd. The Shadow-Id turned around slowly – his cloak momentarily shifting just enough to show a glimpse of the huge lock chained to his chest – and grinned, a smirk that spread across his face like sap oozing from a freshly-cut tree, his pointed teeth showing in a macabre mockery of my usual roguish expression. “Well well,” he said, his voice echoing with the kind of warped underlay you’d expect in a B-Grade demonic-horror movie, “My Ego has decided to pay me a visit. How nice. To what do I owe this pleasure?” “Can it, Shadow,” I replied, “My patience is already thinning and we only just started the conversation.” “Ha! A conversation between us? Have we ever been so civil to one another that we’d have a conversation?” “There’s another Mindscaper out there, and he’s started invading the mindscape.” My dark-self tilted his head, his smirk still etched on his face. We locked eyes for a few seconds as he stepped down the dais before he turned away suddenly. “Good luck to him,” he said, “It’s not like I see much of the place anyway. Ought to be a nice change of decor, wouldn’t you say?” “You don’t get it, do you?” “I understand perfectly,” the Shadow-Id snapped, whirling around; his face had suddenly contorted into a look of pure rage, a bestial expression made all the more savage by his inhuman fangs and now-glowing eyes. “For a long time, you ran away from all the nasty bullies,” he snarled, “And eventually, you created this place as the ultimate retreat. But now there’s some big old nasty son of a bitch who’s got the same power you do, and you can’t run any more! Once again, you’re a frightened little boy who can’t do anything on your own without-!” His rant was interrupted by my future self stomping forward and backhanding him across the face. “Shut up!” he yelled, lifting the Shadow-Id by the front of his shirt, “And listen! If our enemy succeeds in taking over the mindscape, he won’t just let us live! He’ll kill us to establish complete control over the bounds of this realm, and then you’ll cease to exist too, or have you forgotten that you’re only a psychological echo?” My dark-self was silent. His fringe had dropped over his eyes, rendering his expression unreadable. And then... he began to laugh. It started as an amused chuckle, slowly building up until he exploded in manic hysterics. “So that’s how it is, is it?” he managed to say between giggles, “When your own power isn’t enough, you turn to your darker conscience with a plea for more power. It’s been the same throughout the ages, I guess; all the very worst dictators and tyrants have fallen to the same old temptation.” He vanished from Future-Crusader’s grip, and I felt a hand clap me on the shoulder. “Very well,” his voice declared from behind me, “I’ll aid you in your merry little quest, if only to save my own skin. But be warned,” he added, his voice dropping to a whisper, “My methods are not like yours; I’ll do anything to secure our survival. Anything, my dear Ego.” I brushed his hand off my shoulder irritably. “Just as long as you know who’s in charge,” I said, “Just because I need your help doesn’t mean I won’t beat the crap out of you if you play up.” “I assure you, I look forward to it, mmhmhmhmhm!” With very little time to work with, the three of us decided to teleport to the edge of the mindscape closest to my rival’s, bypassing his forces and any other obstacles we would otherwise have been subjected to. It was a missed opportunity for an epic quest, but with so much at stake there was no time to enjoy the challenge. A few metres behind the boundary where our mindscapes met, Cain stood with his arms folded, a smug grin on his face. “So nice of you to come all this way to meet me,” he said. “You know,” Future-Crusader remarked airily, “I’m getting a little sick of these self-satisfied types in capes today.” “Sick of moi?” my dark-self replied, “I’m touched.” “I’m going to ask you one more time, Cain,” I declared, “Abandon the war right now.” My ultimatum only garnered a laugh from the Mindscaper. “I don’t think so, Crusader,” he said, “Truth is, it’s just too much fun to quit now! Besides, as long as I stay in my mindscape, I’m invincible! I can just spam you with troops until you’re overwhelmed by them, all from the safety of my own home!” “And that’s your final decision?” “It is.” So much for negotiations. I looked at my two alternate selves and nodded once. “It’s true, Cain,” I said, “As long as you stay in your mindscape, we don’t have the technology to warp through all the superdimensional space between our worlds. But that’s just it, isn’t it?” Cain’s grin faltered a little bit. “What’s ‘it’?” “Our mindscapes can’t touch because our psychic signatures are anathema to one another. If they were to collide, they would slowly annihilate each other, like matter meeting anti-matter. But I wonder,” I added, all three of us approaching the boundary of the mindscape, “If I crash my mindscape into yours, can you repair it as quickly as three of me can repair mine?” In an instant, my rival’s expression fell into one of pure horror. “Y-you can’t!” he exclaimed, “The strain would kill us both!” “Whether I live to see tomorrow or not is none of my concern!” my future self roared, “As long as we destroy you, life and death are meaningless!” “Though we’d prefer to come out on top, obviously,” the Shadow-Id added. “Prepare yourself, Cain,” I said, furrowing my brow as I readied my mind for the imminent wave of psychic stress, “And remember; you chose this path.” And with that, I willed the mindscape to push forward in the cosmic sea and slam into Cain’s domain. The sensation of having one’s imagination and psyche being seared away from the inside is indescribable to someone without psychic power. Suffice to say it is immensely agonising; you feel feverish, as if caught in a waking dream, while parts of your brain simultaneously experience a migraine and the feeling of parts burning and flaking off, only to drift back, heal back into place and repeat the process all over again. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Despite the pain, I could sense what was going on around me; the mindscapes were clashing, creating a huge implosion of space and light, endlessly showering a torrent of prismatic sparks, coloured beyond conventional identification. Both realities were rapidly disintegrating as mine forced itself upon Cain’s. Cain himself was staggering backwards from the point of impact, clutching his head and yelling something I couldn’t quite hear, on account of psychic static drowning out any audible stimuli. In a momentary burst of lucidity, I wondered if I too had been reduced to a screaming, weakened wreck. Not that I would be aware of it in this state... Suddenly, the pain lessened, like a burn wound being submerged in cold water; my allies were lending me their strength, focusing their powers on supporting me and repairing the mindscape. Almost at once, the edge of my realm – no, our realm – stopped shrinking and began to fill out again. Cain’s mindscape withered away beneath the assault, dwindling away until Cain was pressed up against the rapidly-constricting walls of the mindscapes. And then, with a final crackle of raw energy, his mindscape simply ceased to exist. And in the middle of a scorched patch of earth at the edge of my mindscape lay my foe, curled up in a foetal position and shaking slightly. “Well done, Crusader,” the Shadow-Id remarked wryly, “Instead of putting him out of his misery, you’ve stripped him of his beloved powers and his sanity to boot. I mean, he does deserve such a tormented fate, but... Well, perhaps I’m just surprised to find you giving in to sadism in the pursuit of justice.” I refused to reply. He was right. I hadn’t just destroyed Cain’s mindscape; I’d destroyed everything that made him who he was, turning him into a vegetative husk. Maybe it was over-exertion from using my powers more than I’d ever done before. Maybe it was the shock of having single-handedly driven a man insane. Maybe it was both. Whatever the cause, I nonetheless began feeling uncomfortably light-headed and dizzy. My future-self’s alarmed shouts dimmed to a muffled echo as my legs gave out from beneath me, allowing me to fall into the comfort of unconsciousness. When I awoke, it took me several attempts to open my eyes. The white ceiling above me was a harsh contrast to the blackness of slumber, and my eyes were reluctant to adjust. “Welcome back, sir.” I tilted my head towards the voice, catching a wide view of the Tower’s infirmary in the process – I must have been brought here after I fainted, I thought – and spotted Cassandra seated beside the bed I was lying on. “What... no, where...” I mumbled, trying to piece together a coherent sentence. “Your alternates returned you to the Tower shortly after you passed out following your battle with Cain Blake,” the android explained, her eyes locked on me in her usual eerie stare, “Your Shadow-Id returned to his abode soon afterwards and instructed me to deliver his ‘fondest wish to get well soon’. I detected a 59% sarcasm saturation rate in his voice,” she added with what I swore was the shadow of a smirk. “And Future-Crusader? Did he... get erased?” “Surprisingly, no. Your future self appeared quite disturbed by the implications of his continued existence, but remarked that it was quite possible that his reality-warping powers were keeping him isolated from the timeline.” “Where is he now?” “Working with some of your more knowledgeable companions to theorise a way back to the future. They were discussing the ‘Akashic Records’ concept when I left them.” I gave a ‘hm’ of acknowledgement and shut my eyes again. What if my future self was stuck in the past permanently? It was quite the predicament... though with the best and brightest of my characters helping him, I had no doubt that he’d get back... eventually. “If I may sir...” Cassandra’s voice prompted me to open my eyes again. “As a machine built for the purpose of ensuring your safety,” she said, “I cannot fully condone your reckless and self-endangering actions today. However... as an individual... I consider your efforts admirable.” I frowned in confusion; a compliment from Cass, who usually only thought in purely logical lines? “What do you mean, ‘admirable’?” I asked slowly. The android suddenly looked away. Normally this would be a welcome change from her continuous staring, but I nonetheless found her unnatural reaction... strange. “You should get some more rest, sir,” she said, still avoiding eye contact (for once), “You have been through a lot today. I will continue to watch over you... as always.” Is it possible that... I wondered, before immediately dismissing the thought that had sprung up in my head, No, that’s impossible... Instead, I settled by nodding once and shutting my eyes again. So, odd behaviour from Cass and a hunt for the ‘Akashic Records’, huh? I wondered as I began to fall back asleep, Sounds like another adventure isn’t too far away... Ought to be fun.
	Check out my tumblr, Aggravated Anime-Adoring Australian, where I post all sorts of dumb screencaps and MS Paint edits and generally bitch and moan about stupid otaku shit. ~One third of =SB='s Legendary Australian Trio. The man who surpassed anime fandom and became the Patron Saint of GAR and Moe.~


HollyYoshi	Sep 19 2010, 09:47 PM Post #2
I object to your claims Posts: 15,025 Group: =SB= Queens Member #9,640 Joined: January 9, 2009 Gender: Female Country: United States of America 3DS Friend Code: 1891-1489-0768 Nintendo ID: Agent_Blaire Game Currently Playing: Yoshi's Island	Okay TUC, ol buddy, let's see what we've got here... First, the bad. Yes, this thing does look a little on the rushed side, especially towards the end. Nevertheless, you gave the readers a very good story. Though, I have to ask.....how did Future Crusader's hair turn all white in just a decade? What is he...late twenties by this point? And for some reason, I imagined Rachel during the loading sequences. Dunno why. I blame the chocolate mention.



Lord Tora Unlimited Crusader	Sep 19 2010, 09:56 PM Post #3
【The Knight of Tigers 】 Posts: 5,462 Group: Former Monarchs Member #6,733 Joined: March 17, 2008 Gender: Male Country: Australia 3DS Friend Code: 0404-6433-6113 Steam ID: crusaderandtimothy	Well, the reason behind Future-Crusader's white hair was in the parts I had to cut out. Let's just say that 'driving' a whole miniature realm through superdimensional space - along with certain other traumatic events along the way - is megas-stressful, nyoro.
	Check out my tumblr, Aggravated Anime-Adoring Australian, where I post all sorts of dumb screencaps and MS Paint edits and generally bitch and moan about stupid otaku shit. ~One third of =SB='s Legendary Australian Trio. The man who surpassed anime fandom and became the Patron Saint of GAR and Moe.~


HollyYoshi	Sep 20 2010, 09:43 AM Post #4
I object to your claims Posts: 15,025 Group: =SB= Queens Member #9,640 Joined: January 9, 2009 Gender: Female Country: United States of America 3DS Friend Code: 1891-1489-0768 Nintendo ID: Agent_Blaire Game Currently Playing: Yoshi's Island	Fair enough then. =3



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