The green void looked as eternal as ever.
Sam had explained once that if you walked out into it, no matter how far you got, when you turned around, Webkinz World would always be just at the edge of your vision. He said that he had walked into it for approximately twenty days once, a desperate act to find any way out, defying the pointlessness of the action that he already knew well. He made it back to town in a couple hours.
(After Angel's disappearance, Furry and Sam had briefly freaked out, briefly discussed their options, and quickly decided that they had to see this – that it was the most hope they had ever had of finding an escape.)
They walked for five minutes, and that was all it took before the green below them shifted to black, the sky above them shifted to blacker, and a simple wooden desk appeared before them.
At the side of the desk was Angel, standing on the ground and facing them.
And sitting behind it was Ms. Birdy.
"Welcome!" she earnestly greeted once they had walked up. "Thank you both very much for coming!"
Sam ignored the welcome, immediately targeting Angel. "So what the hell are you doing here?"
"I know this is confusing, and you don't trust me," she empathetically said. "But please, Birdy will explain everything. I hope you will understand my choices afterwards."
Sam grunted discontentedly, but turned towards the figure sitting at the desk regardless. "Well?" he growled.
"Where should we begin?" the humanoid duck pondered cheerily. "I'm sure you want to hear about the nature of this world you're in, yes?"
"That sounds like a good place to start," Furry responded unsurely, still a little overwhelmed by the sensation that he was standing on nothing and should have been falling at any given moment.
"Then let's begin! The first thing to understand is that there is another plane of reality to ours, the Material Universe, though you could call it whatever you like. That world is just full of living beings, much like us, whose minds mix material molecules and mysterious mechanisms." In the middle of her explanation, Ms. Birdy giggled. "Your language is just so interesting to use," she said as an aside, shaking her head amusedly.
"That's wonderful to hear. Get to the fucking point," Sam demanded with annoyance, presumably just as befuddled as Furry but putting it aside for the moment.
"Yes, of course. Well, the unusual quantum mechanisms responsible for our consciousness, processes that most of us living things never understood, vibrate in quite unusual ways. As a byproduct, it turns out these vibrations make a sort of imprint on a higher dimension, a constant record of the mind. You humans might call it a 'soul', but on its own, it's really only information. Without the natural particle processes that keep it running, there is no consciousness, no active mind. But fortunately for this unfortunate state of affairs, there's hope for these inert souls! For our reality, the Thought Plane – or at least that's what I call it – is sensitive to change, and influenced by a great many factors, amplified by chaos theory and circulating all throughout it. And sometimes, just very rarely, these currents of activity will happen to spark a soul in just the right way to restore its function, its very life! Well, because the Thought Plane is influenced at a particulate level by the processes of minds, a soul once restarted will sustain itself through self-feedback – so long as its progenitor being is dead and so does not overwrite it. But there is more to this than just restored life. As the Thought Plane responds to the processes of minds, any mind, once restarted, is able to control our world, one particle at a time. And so, there are beings like me – or even the three of you! – who can manipulate our reality, and are in a sense gods. Though of course, it is quite difficult to alter even one particle exactly as you wish to, and most meaningful effects require manipulating vast amounts of them, and so most gods take many, many years to establish any real degree of control."
Suddenly, she leaned towards Furry and Sam, and with a disconcerting, frankly incongruous grin, she boasted, "But not me!"
She sounded proud as she continued explaining. "No, my soul was only restarted a mere twenty-three human years ago. Normally, I could never dream of standing against the older gods in the fierce competition for gathering souls to my own world with such little experience controlling the Thought Plane. But I spent my time experimenting, devising a new technique. Our world, of course, is manipulated by the thoughts of minds – and where else can one find such a large number of active minds than the material universe? So, I managed to create an innovative process of linking our world to thought processes in the material world, and thereby offloading the work of controlling the Thought Plane to a much larger population. To make any sort of cohesive world, however, I needed to connect to the thoughts surrounding a single idea. Living humans have something called computer games – I believe you both may remember what they are?" (Furry found that he did, in the same inexplicable way he knew so many other things about a world he had never lived in (or apparently had lived in?)) "Well, they are quite applicable for this purpose – a medium that causes large quantities of minds to focus on an already well-defined and consistent world. I found a game called 'Webkinz' that I felt described a world I wanted to create.
"And so, Webkinz World was born in the Thought Plane, powered by thousands of minds collectively doing the hard work to construct it, giving it enough of a solid existence to resist other gods, and allowing me to collect a fair number of the human souls that so interested and appealed to me and place them into a world of my own. That, friends, is why we are here, and why this world exists. I hope you are enjoying it!"
Furry gave himself time in silence to work through the explanation – in fact, the whole gathering was silent for a while. The descriptions of quantum particles and higher dimensions were all a bit of a mystery to Furry. He did recognize some of the ideas, but deeper understanding eluded him. If this new knowledge was true, then he supposed he must not have been an expert in the field during his previous life. But if he simply accepted the fact that thoughts controlled the Thought Plane, then everything basically made sense… not that he didn't have his questions.
He began with a lesser one. "You said that we were humans? Not Webkinz?"
"Why, yes! In fact, 'Webkinz' do not even exist as living things in the material universe, outside of humans' imaginations – and their computer game, of course."
"And… are you not human?" he followed up, expressing an impression he had felt from the way Ms. Birdy spoke.
"No. I come from an alien species of a different planet. Humans, however… you are so similar to us, but so different, too. You're quite exciting – I couldn't resist bringing your souls into my world! As for my own species, I couldn't pronounce its name, nor my own real name, in English. We do not really speak in the same way that you do. But you may both call me Ms. Birdy!"
"So here's what I still don't get," Sam interjected, disgruntled. "Why the fucking hunger?"
Ms. Birdy's pride mellowed out. "Ah," she sighed. "As it turns out, there were a number of issues with my method of creation. Because I have no influence on the thoughts of those in the material universe, the world they create is rigid. That firmness is good in the sense that it protects Webkinz World from other gods, but at the same time, it means that much of the world is out of my control. We are bound, essentially, to the human minds that think about Webkinz World, and to exactly what they expect of it. Part of the effect of this is that souls which are restarted by my world are not… completely restarted. There are processes enough in them to create consciousness, but your minds are too controlled by the structure humans impose upon them to really awaken to your normal selves. What you call Lucids, though, have somehow returned to full activity and broken from the dependency on human minds. I still do not quite understand why this happens, but I believe it is more up to chance than anything else.
"Oh, but I'm digressing from the question you asked! Well, the other effect of our reliance on humans is that nothing new can really be created without human interaction. The items that were in your Docks when your owners left are the only items you will ever have, unless you trade with other Webkinz. Unfortunately, this includes food. I would of course like to simply disable your hunger, but it is too deeply grounded in the rules of our world. Your bodies have real, biological mechanisms inside of them that are reliant on food – and if I knew how to interfere meaningfully with those, I wouldn't need a connection to the material world. So, the hunger is just something we will unfortunately have to bear. We are working on a solution, but it is likely to be hundreds or thousands of years before that is achievable."
"I don't think I understand. Why can't you just make more food? You… do seem to have some control here, don't you?" Furry puzzled.
"Well, it's more a matter of complexity. If I simply needed to create a solid block of… iron, let's say, it would be quite easy." She closed her eyes in concentration for a few moments, and surely enough, a small iron cube simply formed on her desk, building itself quickly up from the bottom. She picked it up and began fidgeting with it as she continued.
"The problem is that food is not just many atoms of a single element put together in a regular shape. Just about anything that would allow your bodies to function would require a number of complicated macromolecules, repeated in varying formations all throughout the food. Making that is not a task for a twenty-three year old god," Ms. Birdy concluded, shaking her head.
"Then if you can't fix the problem, why the hell don't you just get rid of this world? Turn off the souls of those who aren't Lucid, get rid of the bodies of those who are. The hunger makes our lives a hell - there's no reason to keep us like this!" Up until now, Sam was annoyed, dissatisfied with Ms. Birdy, but it seemed like he had been... hearing her out, listening to her reasoning before passing a judgement. Now, he had heard her, and he sounded angry. Furry found himself nodding along to the request.
Ms. Birdy, on the other hand, sounded disturbed - hurt, even. "I don't understand all of you humans. When you first heard my explanation, you asked for that, Angel asked for that, Emerald asked for that, Leo asked for that - Why? Why would you all want something like that? Existing in the fullest form possible, having an active mind and a physical body - isn't that the most important thing? I can't even imagine wanting to give that up."
"Well clearly, we don't want the same fucking thing as you. You can go ahead and keep existing 'fully' if you want, but get the rest of us out of these damn bodies!" Sam's rage was only growing more intense as she continued her explanation.
"I refuse!" She returned with anguish. "If that is what you want, then I don't trust your judgement! Returning you all back to a fraction of a being - it's too horrible to consider!"
(Furry, like Sam, was starting to feel something too. He wanted to give Ms. Birdy a chance - to find out that she had a good reason for putting them all through this - but... Sam's suffering, Lucky's fate, the hunger of all the thousands of Webkinz who had never woken up - all of that, because Ms. Birdy just didn't understand what they wanted? Because she refused to let it stop, no matter how easy it would be?
It was a new feeling that was rising, something he had only had hints of before. It was something burning in his chest, the fire almost painful but making him want to keep it flaming anyway. Was this anger?)
"Great," San barked. "Great! So it turns out the reason we're all facing eternal pain is because our god has a fucking idiotic set of priorities! I'm glad we've been so enlightened!"
Sam turned to the side with exasperation, took a few heavy breaths, and finally snapped his gaze towards Angel.
"So where the hell do you fit into all this? I'm still not a damn step closer to 'understanding your actions'."
"Eight years ago, Birdy approached me with an offer. Since all active souls are able to manipulate the Thought Plane, Lucids can, too. I made it through the hunger without becoming catatonic, and so she requested that I join her and assist in controlling and improving Webkinz World. I couldn't refuse - this was my best chance to make a difference in the situation of all Webkinz." Throughout the whole explanation, she kept up an apologetic tone, but she was still composed, still firm.
"Right," Sam responded, still sounding skeptical, but perhaps less so than before. "And why, then, did you lie to Furry?"
Angel glanced up at Ms. Birdy, as if asking for permission.
The humanoid duck, in response, took up her explanation from there. "Sam displays and has always displayed a hatred of my system too strong to trust him. I cannot involve him in administrating it, for fear that he would try to destroy it. I instructed Angel to try and drive Sam away from Furry, to keep him out of things. Well, after Sam became suspicious of Angel too, I decided to explain things to him as well - I have always felt it is better to try and talk things through with potential opposition. But now I have explained things, and I must talk with Furry alone, so I will send you off, Sam. Have a good day!"
Before he could protest, Sam instantly disappeared.
When Furry looked concernedly at Ms. Birdy, she assured, "Oh, no worries. I have only sent him back to town. But I do have something of importance to talk to you about. Furry, with your stock of food, you can be expected to remain active for years to come. I would like to offer you the same thing I have to Angel. I wish for you to join me here. I will help you learn to control the Thought Plane, and you will help me with Webkinz World.
"However, as I have stated, Sam is a danger to my work. If you join me, you will have to leave him behind. I will let you think, but I would be delighted if you choose to work together with me!"
And so, as Ms. Birdy and Angel watched, Furry thought.
Of course the benefits were obvious. He could contribute to the cause - help save everyone from the hunger faster, even just a little bit.
Of course the costs were obvious, too.
Minutes of back and forth in Furry's mind passed. Ultimately, though, he had to come to a conclusion.
At last, hesitantly and with a shaky voice, he answered.
"I accept."
