It's a funny thing about this place; sensations don't quite match up. Abed knows that he is standing very still on the moon as the night sky strips itself away of its own accord, and yet his knees hurt and his fingers are tacky. He can feel his hands chipping away at something, but when he looks down, they remain unmoving.
He rubs his face; his hand comes back wet, but he's not crying on either side of reality. He tastes his fingers; they taste like television static, a blinding white noise of emotion that sent him here where it's safe to not feel when nothing makes sense.
Above him, the universe grapples with being ripped apart. It tries to implode, but it's cut into squares and it doesn't fold right. The sounds it makes while attempting to fold in on itself are akin to anguished screaming.
But then, that might just be the white noise.
Troy is hanging upside down on his bunk bed by his knees. He's holding a drawing up to Abed's face.
"I'm telling you, we need all 301 balloons to be purple-"says Troy.
Abed shakes his head.
"It's more aesthetically pleasing to have a pyramid with a clear top. The balloon on top should be pink."
He holds out his palm out for a marker; Troy hands him one. Abed begins to shade in a pink dot. Troy smiles a big smile.
"You're right, that really was the way to go," he says with a yawn.
"I know," says Abed, "at this rate we should be done by 5 AM."
Troy doesn't say anything, but begins snoring instead. Abed pushes him right side up and all the way into the top bunk; he covers him with a blanket. He checks the digital clock. It's 10:30 PM.
Abed builds the pyramid himself and collapses at 5 AM. Troy's alarm clock goes off right as he's getting into bed.
That afternoon, Abed digs his fingers into the walls of the Dreamatorium to make space in the house for an adult.
He's never cried on the moon before, not even when he walked on it in the Dreamtorium for the first time. He remembers the dust giving satisfyingly under his feet and somewhere in his head he knew it was beautiful, but Inspector Spacetime saw the moon all the time and had never once cried over that or anything else, so Abed didn't either when he borrowed his body.
Troy cried the first time, but then Troy has never understood a willful absence of feeling or of anything at all, for that matter. Abed doesn't think that there is ever too much of the present for Troy; it's one of the things he loves about him, and it's also a thing that he knows he will never quite understand. For Abed, the present is always too much; if Troy were gone, Abed isn't sure he would ever remember again how to be.
The implosion happens; it's just a room now, which is what it's supposed to be.
When Annie's not looking, though, he pockets the mainframe components.
Just for insurance.