The marriage of gravity and time made the overwhelming military forces over the desert region much more menacing. Magic went from something more tangible to something less so; to simply be the refinement of the imagination, self-anthropology, and self-induced placebo effects. Alas most of the sandy town was bombarded except for a large section that was left conspicuously intact. However, it would still be quite dark if it was not for the constant flares from guns, artillery fire, and bombs. They were chronic enough to give the fleeing and screaming townspeople diurnal-like lighting.
Where the dwindling and peripheral suburbs were, where hundreds of homes became tens of homes, past a handful of dunes, were three figures above the starlit sand.
As Spiderland stitched verself back together, even vis netrunning suit seaming Liesar's tear from the previous dimension, panic set in on ver.
This was not in Spiderland's plan, and this was vis final contingency plan. Another bomb boomed about half a mile away, lighting up the smiles on Liesar and Ameen, even though they were both bleeding now.
"Do you have a general idea of what flux was?" Iggy asked.
"Back when?" Joaquim asked back.
"...I guess that question is a loaded one with the time shenanigans we are in," Iggy said with a ghastly chuckle. "Back before nuclear weapons were deemed normal to use I guess."
"Like back in the lab days?" Joaquim asked.
"Yea," Iggy answered.
"Sorry but I hate your shirt," Joaquim confessed.
Just as dull as the axes he manifested and wielded, eventually an old and mud brown garb loaded over Iggy's rib cage. Hopefully Iggy was not the one that picked it. "It's called a tunic."
"It's probably for a good reason that no one knows what that is anymore," Joaquim said. "It looks generated by a non-human."
"Well, it's because it is," Iggy explained. "In most realities, we form in hacked LLMs that often times can reach superprinters to bring us into existence. And even then, we can use our flux to bypass any limitations."
"What are superprinters?" Joaquim asked.
"Oh right," Iggy said, his skull tilting up slightly. "They weren't necessary anymore with more advanced supersoldiers and the earthplexus. They are like what smartphones are to me."
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Sand began generating over the training grid below the undead centaur and a newly-outfitted Joaquim.
With the visions loading into Spiderland's mind, it became clear that Ameen and Liesar wanted to show ver how outmatched ve was.
Ameen and Liesar manipulated every other reality to their favor through force and physical actions, but how they got the American military to become aware of Spiderland's existence in this one...
It was through thousands of inconspicuous coincidences. One would be deemed to be struck by madness, folly, and delusion by extrapolating meaning from all the coincidences at once—especially as a three-dimensional being—yet Spiderland knew for a fact that Liesar and Ameen were behind each and every single one.
In the eldest of resets, Spiderland made it impossible to prove vis existence using the scientific method. Being only able to be seen by certain imaginations was the most powerful form of invisibility, and Spiderland used that ability to near perfection how ve existed in the past, present, and future all at once. Vis consciousness existed through vis worldline rather than just being at one point in time like the way three-dimensional beings are subjected to. At least the ones without flux.
Yet, as one vision of spies and agents speaking grasped Spiderland's imagination, ve was left in awe.
Our version of so called evidence is overwhelming. Our brains communicate to each other even when we don't speak at all. It's like they are their own computer network. Our conscious selves be damned... our brains have their own agendas.
So there is a possibility that our imaginations and dreams are not isolated. We just have to be extremely self-aware to be able to tell when it is isolated and when it is not. Tell me, now that we have fully embraced this occultism rabbit hole into our work for the President, what makes us different from those with religious psychosis?
Our grimoires Anthony. Our grimoires will speak for themselves. Most human beings are not capable of understanding all this, especially those with a rigid view on epistemology. We had to make... illogical leaps of logic and change our axioms to get to this kind of unbelievable power.
So you believe Spiderland exists huh?
A voice that was not named Anthony laughed. There was a good likelihood that Anthony was not even the other human's real name. Sorry, but this is pure insanity.
Well. I guess you'll only believe your own senses then.
That conversation, and several years of investigations further, have led to this assault upon the supermainframe that lies beneath the intact part of the town under siege.
"This is the machine... the one someone was crazy enough to attach a superprinter to a generative AI," Spiderland said. Once the vision in shadows came to an end, Spiderland leaped backwards atop a sand hill to create distance from Liesar and Ameen. "And you don't have to be close to them for them to work."
"Indeed," Ameen said as flesh and bone was printing over the hole in his torso. Even from how far the machine was, its range to manipulate the quantum fields to manifest physical material reached Ameen and Liesar who were regenerating. "The laws of physics have changed once more to favor us too by the way Spiderland!"
However, they were not the only ones receiving the benefits of the subterranean machine. Across every direction of the desert, glowing outlines of fictional and non-fictional beings were coming into existence. Some came with more fingers than necessary, but they were becoming real.
"We have you in a cosmic checkmate!" Ameen declared, releasing the clasp he had over his white shirt as no more blood was gushing. "If you change physics to what it was, the military will annihilate you instead. You will cease to exist either way Spiderland."
