[F to S – Are you really sure you want to do this?]
[S to F – Yeah, yeah, I know, it's dangerous and maybe we'll just end up in another shitty world. But hell, I've been dealing with shitty worlds for both my whole lives. You'll come save us eventually, yeah?]
(More freed from the binds of Webkinz World, everyone had been remembering their past lives more. Sam recalled more hunger even then, imposed by poverty rather than physics. He was young, as far as he could tell – teenaged. He was fairly confident that he had been shot to death, but was still working out the why of it.)
[F to S – Very eventually. If I can manage it.]
[S to F – Still. Somebody's gotta do it, and it may as well be me. At least we know I can deal with it.]
[F to S – I guess.]
[S to F – Hey, I mean, I'll miss you. These couple years with you have been pretty good, you know. And it's thanks to you that it's just gotten so much better. Me too, a bit, I guess. Actually, you know what, it was probably mostly Angel. But whatever, that's not the point. Point is, we're gonna see each other again. Hell, it might not even take more than a few weeks if we're lucky.]
(They had no bodies to show emotion with, no sadness apparent, no regretful tones of voice. They had separated the minds of the Lucid from their bodies soon after their victory, though not before broadcasting a mass message explaining the truth of the world and letting them know they could even leave Webkinz World if they wanted – though they recommended against it, given all the alien gods. Most of the liberated minds had stayed. A few, after some time working out how to move around in their new state, left the safety behind. Furry wished they hadn't, but after seeing what Ms. Birdy did, he felt it was best if he let them choose.)
A new mind appeared near them. [A to Both – So, you're ready?]
(Angel already knew a fair amount about her former life, but more was coming back. She remembered being wealthy, owning a business. She felt like she had donated much of her wealth, and founded a charity, though she wasn't sure what for. She was fairly certain she had died of old age, or at least died while she was old.)
[S to Both – Yeah. I guess it's time to go, then.]
There was a long period of hesitation. [S to Both – See you soon, Furry.]
[F to Both – See you soon. Both of you. Please stay safe.]
[S to Both – We'll do our best. We'll be back to let you know when we find a better world. You know, if one of those actually exists.]
A few seconds later, the two minds beside Furry disappeared, and he was left behind, alone once more.
Furry was purely a mind now, as he watched the main town of Webkinz World from above.
It had been a long time since he had been here. Those few weeks, early in his new life, were strange to think about. For almost all his time here, there was simply the void – and there would be void for long to come. He knew he couldn't return to that fresh beginning, wasn't sure that he would want to. Really, he couldn't quite remember what it felt like to live here back then.
Things had changed. He had changed.
(The time before even that beginning was coming back for Furry, too. There was little to say of it. He was a computer programmer – he had figured that out already. He lived a fairly normal life, free of major hardship, with a few friends and not much social interaction, though he felt he had wanted more. He had died while still attending college. He felt like it was probably due to a disease. He had never really made much of an impact on anything or anyone – he had simply lived, and then he had simply died. Somehow, the memories didn't seem to matter much to him.)
Furry looked down at Webkinz World, for a few moments being still.
He had thought about the world's system. It was a brilliant idea, and it had worked… but he decided that it was never going to truly work. Ms. Birdy's reign had proved that much. If they remained so dependent on the living, their souls would simply never be able to wake up fully, to live independently. This outsourcing of creation was a fundamentally flawed plan.
So Furry would just have to do the heavy lifting on his own, to make a new world the right way. It would take a while – and that was an understatement. It would probably be a few thousand years before he could even create a basically functioning world, he knew. But he felt like he could live with that. And he knew he wouldn't have to do it alone – there were already dozens of other Lucids, freed from the hunger now, ready to help. Perhaps he could talk with Emerald and Leo, to start with. If he got lucky and Sam and Angel's search bore fruit, maybe he wouldn't have to wait nearly that long, anyway.
He thought of the other gods, of the uncountable number of souls forced into awful situations like the Webkinz had been, still out there. He had been thinking of them ever since Ms. Birdy's defeat, in the back of his mind. Eventually, he thought, enough time would pass that the current gap in experience between him and the others wouldn't matter so much, relatively. When that day came, he would try his best to save all the souls of the Thought Plane. For now, though, he had the Webkinz, these few thousand souls safe from the outside world, and he would help them until he was powerful enough to help everyone.
But in the meantime, he wouldn't be like Ms. Birdy. He would let the unawakened souls sleep.
And so at last, with great effort, Furry erased the town below him, taking the bodies of every last Webkinz with it, holding their minds safe in the center of a rigid shell.
(He took special care to preserve the site of the battle, and the two interlinked minds that still remained there, ripped apart.)
Years after their last visit, succ remembered an old pastime, and an old login. They pulled up the site from their past – somewhat surprised, as always, that it was still there. They wondered, briefly, if it would ever go away.
The game loaded, as succ watched with continued amusement, until the room they had created so long ago popped into view. Over there were the obstructively large chairs – up there was the balloon that somehow blocked walking past it, succ remembered with a laugh – down on the item dock were those 747 Almonds, they recalled purchasing with a bigger laugh –
And there in the center was a grey wolf, looking almost at the screen but restricted by the grid, with four empty meters in the corner, showing his lack of energy, food, happiness, or care.
Still a heart icon floated up from the wolf in the room, and its image at the side spoke.
"I missed you! Welcome back!"
