Ms. Birdy had responded ecstatically to Furry's decision, welcoming him to the team and explaining that he would live in this external void region to the world while he worked, as Angel did. She said she would give him some time to "settle in" before she began teaching him about how to mentally control their reality.

It was only after he began to look around, on his own and out of sight of the other two, that the message came.

It was written in slightly bright white light, floating in front of his eyes, the edge effects and flatness revealing that it seemed to exist only within his vision, that it was not an object that had appeared in front of him.

[DON'T SHOW ANY SIGN THAT YOU SEE THIS!] was all it showed at first, large font taking up much of his vision. Furry tried to do as told.

Afterwards, it changed to be longer, and smaller, but still readable. [This is Angel. I am making what I believe to be a reasonable assumption that you wish to work against Ms. Birdy in order to shut down Webkinz World. She will be able to see or hear any mundane communications through her powers over the Thought Plane. In order for us to cooperate, we will need to send messages at a higher level, through direct manipulation of reality, as I am doing now. You should begin to learn how to mimic this method after Birdy teaches you how to do basic manipulation. It will take you time, likely around two weeks, but it is on the simpler side of things. The essence of it is to create photons that are directed towards the recipient's eyes and will not spill over to anywhere else. In the meantime, if you would like me to send a message to Sam explaining your disappearance and asking him to learn this same method, please tap your front left paw on the ground three times – and try to make it subtle.] Furry did so, and a few seconds later the text changed. [Signal received. I will send the message.]

Furry's vision went quiet for a little while, so he returned focus to actually exploring the room he had been given. The walls and roof looked to be a metallic grey – he presumed they were created out of pure iron (or some other metal) by Birdy or Angel. The bed and table, on the other hand, looked like proper furniture that would have been back in his house in the main part of Webkinz World. He supposed it was possible that they were created by thought manipulation, but they seemed rather complex for that, so he wondered if they were simply retrieved from someone's item dock.

While he walked, his mind was racing. He had intended to turn against Ms. Birdy, Angel was spot on – that was the main reason he had accepted in the first place. (But then he had to wonder if that was really Angel – nothing about it truly proved she was the sender. Perhaps Ms. Birdy was testing his loyalty? To see if he would report this message? He didn't see much of a way to figure out which was which without risking revealing Angel, if it really was her. He could only place his hope in the fact that this really didn't seem like something Ms. Birdy would do. She had sounded so… bright.)

[I have told Sam of the circumstances.] came a few minutes later. [We can continue working on this after you begin with Ms. Birdy. She will likely come retrieve you soon. In the meantime, just follow along with everything, and act like this never happened.]


"It's so exciting to be teaching a new student again!" exulted Ms. Birdy. She had shifted from the desk setup before, and instead was sitting on a chair by itself, facing Furry and Angel on the floor. (This chair looked a bit fancier than the desk, though it was still wooden – though Furry thought both were items from Webkinz World anyway.)

"Well, let's get started! The basic trick to manipulating the Thought Plane is to focus on the effect you want to produce. Though, it sounds quite a lot simpler than it actually is! To begin with, you have to imagine every effect from the bottom up – you have to think of exactly how each individual particle contributes to things. And beyond that, it isn't sufficient to merely visualize the intended outcome – the Thought Plane isn't exactly optimized for regular human thought to control it. There is simply no good way to describe the proper way to do things in human words. If only you were of my race… but never mind that. It will take you a fair bit of time and practice, but if you mentally 'feel around' for how to do things, you should eventually figure it out. I would suggest trying to produce photons first. They're just about the simplest things to deal with!"

So Furry began trying. After the first few minutes came to no result – as everyone had expected – Ms. Birdy and Angel began working on their own projects, leaving Furry mostly on his own to concentrate.

(He didn't concentrate very well. He was thinking of Sam, first, of what he would be thinking at the moment, and of how long it would be before they actually saw each other again – or even just managed to communicate. He was thinking of Ms. Birdy, of the discordance between how she acted and what she was doing, her role in the world – and of what would need to be done to stop her. (Planning to betray someone, to attack them in some manner, continued to feel wrong, a tearing hook on his conscience that he had to force himself to pull against anyway, because things could not go on.) He was thinking of Emerald and Leo, the two names mentioned only in passing who he was left wondering about. And he was thinking of Angel, who… was not, in almost any way, who she had seemed to be.

He didn't accomplish very much that day.)


"How did things go?" Angel asked when she and Ms. Birdy walked back towards Furry a few hours later.

"Well, um, I wasn't quite able to make anything happen," the wolf sheepishly admitted.

"Oh, no worries!" assured Ms. Birdy. "That's only normal for your first day. We'll give you some time to rest before you start again. In the meantime, how about deciding on living arrangements? I know Emerald and Leo wanted to be left alone, but would you two like to stay together?"

"That sounds agreeable to me," responded Angel, with a just slightly noticeable touch of haste, taking the lead before Furry could. He had intended to accept, too, but he supposed this was more of Angel guiding her plan along.

"I'd also be happy to stay with Angel," Furry agreed, with an enthusiasm that was a little less genuine than usual.

"Then it's settled," Ms. Birdy concluded, putting her hands together decisively. "Angel, would you show Furry to your house?"


In the main part of Webkinz World, Furry was aware that space was being distorted – he knew about the different instances of the world that somehow blended together – but it was mostly invisible. There, the most apparent irregularity was the inside of the house, which became a completely different place for each Webkin, often too big to have fit inside the external building.

Here, however, the spatial folds were an omnipresent part of life. Generally, Furry could only see dark void around him – a sensation he was still adjusting to – but when one of the two more experienced Webkinz wanted to take him somewhere, he suddenly found it appearing before him, breaking the monochromatic background. The same was true of his transit to Angel's home, which popped into existence as a large, rectangular block of metal that – for once – was actually the right size for its contents.

The inside was much like any Webkin's house that he had previously seen, besides being a lot more bare, and the walls being nothing but grey metal. The furniture – a few tables and chairs together here and there, a couple bookshelves, a game of Legal and Non-Copyright-Infringing "Link'D" (which Furry was sure had no relation to a game he had free-floating past-life knowledge of, Connect Four), and two beds in separate rooms – was so basic and so disjointed in theme that Furry had to assume it was just whatever Angel happened to have remaining in her dock when she was left behind.

"This is your room, here," she presented, gesturing with a paw in the open doorway. "I would expect that you'll mainly use it for sleeping when you need it, though you're welcome to go there anytime. That's about it for showing you around – this building is relatively simplistic. But make yourself at home, and have a rest."

Furry nodded. "Thank you for letting me live with you," he said. He at least tried to sound cheery.

He looked around the rooms before eventually walking over to the Link'D setup. He ignored the chairs – they had always been uncomfortable since he became Lucid, and he wondered why they weren't before – and sat on the floor by the low table, as did Angel when she walked over to join him.

"These games are interesting," the ice fawn began musingly. "The two player mode is nothing unusual – we simply place the chips in as usual, and the apparatus works as a regular physical object. But if you sit by the table on your own, and place only your chips, the other chips will levitate into position and fall on their own. They are not random either – they are actually placed with a fair degree of intelligence." She placed her first piece as she spoke, and Furry responded in turn.

"Birdy tells me the original computer game this world is based on has a decision-making algorithm for this game built into its code." She shook her head slowly. "The idea of such a thing is somewhat familiar to me, but I admit I have very little idea how it would work. I suppose it was not my area of expertise before I died. Still, it is interesting to note that it carried over to the Thought Plane."

Furry let the topic hang for a couple moves. (He wasn't awful at the game, but he hadn't played much of it, whereas Angel appeared to be quite experienced. Regardless of whatever his level of skill was, he was fully expecting to lose, as he had the few times he played with Sam. He didn't particularly mind.) Unlike Angel, Furry did feel like he had some idea about the… artificial intelligence behind the game, he remembered that was what it was called. It would consider all the possible moves a few turns ahead, assign a score to features of each outcome, choose the move with the highest score, repeat…

"How do you feel about this… past life thing?" Furry inquired.

"How do you feel about it?" returned Angel.

He had to think about it for a minute. "I can't remember much of anything about what actually happened in it, so I'm not really sure what to think. I guess I would have left people I cared about behind, which I wouldn't want to do, but I… don't know anything, about any of them. Am I supposed to miss them? It feels like I should – I normally always would – but what's there to miss?"

"For me," Angel answered after a pause, "I do, in fact, feel quite close to a memory. I am sure I had family members: a husband, two children, a brother – my parents were both dead already, I believe – though my memory of all of them is fuzzy, lacking specifics. But I don't find myself thinking about them very often. I believe they once mattered greatly to me, but that was that life, and it is over now. I have to look to what's ahead of me now, and focus on fixing the world that I am currently in. I don't think it's wrong for you not to miss the people in your former life. It would only be wrong not to care about the people you know now."

For a little while, only the clacking of game pieces sliding into place was heard. Then, white light filled half of Furry's vision.

[I know being here, and leaving Sam behind, is hard for you. I can certainly sympathize with that. But if you ever doubt yourself, trust me that you have done a very honorable thing by accepting Birdy's offer. We are going to manage our goal, and then Sam, and Lucky, and everyone else will be okay again. I believe you will be able to do it, and I thank you sincerely for trying.]

(Angel finished her row of four pieces. Furry had never really had a doubt that she would.)


It took four days before Furry was able to create his first photon. He only knew it had happened because Ms. Birdy had sensed it and let him know, or it would have disappeared without notice. The next nine days were spent juggling learning simultaneous creation of many particles and directing them in a specific manner.

And so, when Furry and Angel were in their house on the thirteenth day since he came to work with Ms. Birdy, he was able to create a brief message into Angel's eyes only, off-center in her vision and with fuzzy-edged, blocky capital letters, but readable regardless:

[FIRST]


A few days of refining the technique later, Furry could manage the quick creation of larger messages. Angel informed him on this day that Sam had accomplished his first message.

(Communications involving Sam were going to be a little complicated. In order to make the messaging system work, one had to know where the recipient's eyes were going to be. When Angel and Furry were in the same room, this worked out fine, but looking back to a house in town from their current location would require reality manipulation of its own. Angel could do it; the others couldn't. For now, Furry would be relaying messages through her. The opposite direction was even more of a hassle, because Sam didn't have anyone within vision to communicate through. Instead, Angel had to designate a specific region on Sam's wall to treat as her eyes, and then inform him when she was watching it. She was instructing them on teleporting photons into their eyes to be able to see far away, but for now this mess would have to do.)

[F to S – Hello.] (With three people involved, they had had to organize a system of designating senders, and for messages going through Angel, recipients, too.)

[S to F – HEY. HOW'S IT GOING?]

[F to S – I'm okay. It's all kind of weird out here, and it's a stressful goal, and I don't think the constant darkness helps things, but at least I can talk to you again now, and Angel hasn't been so bad now that I understand her better.]

[S to F – I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE ANY PROOF THAT I'M TALKING DIRECTLY TO YOU AND ANGEL ISN'T MAKING EVERYTHING UP, YOU KNOW. SO I GUESS I JUST HAVE TO ASSUME THE WORST. IN WHICH CASE, WOW ANGEL, THAT'S PRETTY DAMN NARCISSISTIC.]

[A to Both – I would like to say that I resent the direction of your conversation, but admittedly my past actions haven't exactly inspired trust. However, I have to ask if this is going to be an ongoing problem.]

The delay for the next message was a bit longer than usual. [S to Both – NO, I GUESS NOT. NOT LIKE THERE'S MUCH OF ANY REASON FOR YOU TO DO WHAT YOU DID BESIDES THE WHOLE BIRDY THING.]

[A to Both – In that case, I believe it's time to begin discussing the reason we are gathered.

Our fundamental goal is to break Birdy's control over Webkinz World. I have considered the possibilities, but it does seem that the only way to do this properly would be to deactivate her soul. As long as she continues thinking, she will be able to manipulate reality.

Doing this, however, will not be simple. Minds in the Thought Plane have a self-reinforcing effect, as their thoughts naturally change reality to make their minds continue to exist and function – this is the same effect that lets Lucid souls remain active in the first place. This is not to mention that Birdy has learned a method of amplifying this effect – a subconscious process of manipulation that constantly supports the operation of her mind. She has taught me this same process and told me everything about how it works, which will help us disable it – she is very trusting. Her species simply does not have betrayal or deception practically ever – the way their civilization works, it would essentially never be a useful strategy. The fact that she ever distrusted Sam enough to exclude him was surprising even to me, and even that only occurred due to how openly brash he is. (Part 1 of 2)]

[S to Both – HEY]

A few seconds passed. [S to Both – I MEAN YOU'RE NOT WRONG]

[A to Both – Putting that aside for a moment. The last complication to shutting Birdy down is the greatest one. What gives Birdy her great resistance to the other gods is the rigidity of Webkinz World, rooted in crowdsourcing from the material universe. As she inhabits a body that is part of this mass imagination, her mind is rigid too. Disabling it is certain to be futile unless we can interrupt the connection to the living world.

Therefore, our plan of attack will involve severing the connection, and then attempting as a group to freeze enough of the particles that make up Birdy's consciousness to turn it off entirely. In the coming months, we will need to prepare and practice these two operations. It will be best to act before Furry runs out of food so that our numbers will be maximized. (Part 2 of 2)]

(Furry was down to 670 Almonds.)


[F to A – Angel, I've been wondering, what was going on with Ms. Birdy considering bringing us here? What was it like?] (It was a couple days later, when Furry and Angel were on a break in the house, not currently engaged in much of anything.)

[A to F – When you woke up, Birdy was torn about how to handle you. It is usually her policy to invite any Lucid who manages the hunger, but you were unusual, because you hadn't actually run out of food yet. She knew that if she started teaching you, that effort would likely eventually go to waste when you really did fall to the hunger. She was wavering between the options, but despite my advice in favor of making the offer to you, I perceived that she was tending towards not bringing you here, especially after you met with Sam. For my purposes, of course I wished for both of you to join me, but I could not risk openly defying Birdy to tell you the truth. So, when she sent me to separate you from Sam, I took the opportunity to let slip hints – enough to make you suspicious of me, but also plausible to have been true sloppiness. After you confronted me, of course, she was much more willing to talk to you, and beyond my expectations, she even invited Sam. Of course, you know the rest.]

(Furry was at 667 Almonds now.)


Five more weeks passed. Sam and Furry had been working on establishing basic control, and had both finally managed the photon-teleportation trick well enough to speak without Angel as an intermediary. At the same time, Furry had been probing at the connection between worlds a little bit, gaining a rudimentary feel of how it worked.

(Between Angel's information and his own investigation, Furry understood the connection to be like this: Human thoughts about Webkinz naturally made slight impressions on the Thought Plane that were sort of like partial creations of the imagined world. However, as Birdy had said, the Thought Plane was not optimized for human thought, and so these impressions generally were quite incomplete and only occasionally functional. Still, each human mind created a recognizable Webkinz-based imprint on the Thought Plane in a defined, constant location. What Birdy had done was find and fold together each of these regions through exotic higher-dimension geometries, overlaying the many fragments of imagination to form a coherent world. The plan was to undo this unification – to separate the overlapping space and thereby eliminate the inflexible structure the imprints imposed. Working out the execution of the plan was the real challenge.)

For now, though, Sam and Furry were making use of their improved messaging skills to simply talk with each other. (The necessary viewing of the message's recipient meant that each of them could actually see the other – the conversation was almost face-to-face. It felt like things were nearly back to normal again for Furry – as normal as they had ever been in this life, anyway.)

[S to F –] (They kept up the identifying convention even in a conversation like this, partly out of habit, and partly in case the third co-conspirator interrupted unexpectedly.) [It's kinda surreal to think we could actually put a stop to the hunger soon. I mean, who the hell am I gonna be angry at when we've overcome Birdy? How the hell am I gonna keep being an irritable dick all the time when I'm not in constant pain anymore?]

[F to S – You aren't really a d*** anyway, Sam!]

A longer pause. [F to S – Most of the time. I think.]

Another gap. [F to S – I guess irritable is fair, though.]

Then, a much longer pause, as Furry prepared a longer message, and hesitated sending it. [F to S – Can I be honest? I still really don't like this plan. We're going to turn against someone who trusts us, and shut off her soul, and… it doesn't feel right. I want to be nice to everyone – we're supposed to be nice to everyone. Are we really good people for doing this?]

Furry could see the contortion of Sam's face through the visual link. [S to F – I get that you feel that way. But sometimes we've gotta do things we don't like, 'cause the alternative just can't go on. It just takes one look at Webkinz World to know it's sure as hell better than leaving her in charge.]

[F to S – I guess.]

(Furry had 625 Almonds now.)


Eight more months passed. Furry had now spent 87% of this existence in the void, and it had started to feel like this was more the normal part of his life than an unusual digression.

Furry had learned to create basic, single-element structures, and a much larger variety of fundamental particles. In theory, Sam could do the same, but he couldn't try it on a much greater scale than a few of any given particle for fear that Ms. Birdy would notice another manipulator. Furry had also worked out the trick of moving through the strangely folded space out here in the void, which definitely helped him get about freely.

Still, these functions were on the less important side of things anyway. In terms of the real work, Furry had been mainly learning about how to disrupt the connection. (They had found that Furry's greater knowledge of computer code made him uniquely suited for this task: he understood the structure that still pervaded Webkinz World in the Thought Plane, and thanks to this, he understood better how to tear it apart.) He was making progress, he thought, but it would be unfortunately impossible to test this part of the plan in full before the actual execution – even relatively small disturbances of the entire spacetime structure they resided in were still pretty noticeable.

Sam, since he couldn't safely work on anything that wasn't subtle, decided to focus on the part of the plan that was subtle – freezing the motion of particles in Ms. Birdy's mind. He was only trying it on inanimate objects, but there wasn't much real difference at the fundamental level between this and what he would really be doing when it came time.

Angel was already more skilled than either of them at most parts of the plan, but she continued practicing on her own, and spent a fair portion of time assisting the other two with their respective study.

Currently, though, she wasn't practicing anything – only discussing.

[A to Both – I've been trying to think, recently, about what will come after our coup. It is easy for me to become lost in the urgency of the issues already facing Webkinz World, but once we have completed our task, I expect our difficulties will only be beginning.]

[F to Both – What do you mean?]

[A to Both – Humans, in our current form, have existed for a few hundred thousand years. There are many, many more alien species present in the Thought Plane, and most of them have been around quite significantly longer than us. This means that the vast majority of powerful gods are not human. From what Birdy has told me, she is on the closer side to sharing human values, and even so, the small differences have consigned us to the hunger. Most of the other gods will not be good for our souls, and many may be even worse than what we face now. I have even heard of a god who claims to have managed permanent oblivion of souls.] (This was a surprise to Furry. From what he understood, it was not terribly difficult to take apart a mind so it would not function. The difficult part was to take it apart in such a way that it would not be easy to see how it was separated and reassemble it. (It was a bit disingenuous to call it "easy". Apparently, even experienced gods could take months to years to put together a highly obscured fractured soul, and even lesser destructions were never easy to revert. They were merely achievable.))

[Once we have taken control of this world's souls, what will we do with them then? It will likely not be as easy as merely taking them to another, more experienced god. I believe it would be highly advisable that we reconstruct at least some aspects of the connection to the living once we are done, or we will be defenseless against far stronger alien minds. Even then, there will be plenty of work left to create a truly good world for us all.]

Furry didn't reply. He wasn't terribly confident about the far future, but he wasn't terribly confident about the near future anyway. He would just have to keep moving forward, to stop the things that simply couldn't go on.

(Furry had 352 Almonds now.)


It wasn't until nine and a half months later, at 28 Almonds and not long left to showtime, that Ms. Birdy screwed with everything.

"I have great news!" she exulted at the beginning of their session. "I have not explained this fully to you, Furry, but the species I come from has an ability to interface with each other, in a sense, merging our minds and bodies to create something greater than any of us working alone. It equilibrates each mind, bringing each closer to the character of the other, forming a single, changed being. Staying unified with many others is a large part of our way of life, but during my time in the Thought Plane, it has not been possible. But after much work, I believe I have developed a way to do so at last! By inserting two souls into the same Webkinz body, and making some more subtle tweaks to the minds, I should be able to create a similar merge. Which of you would want to try it out with me?" (There was a layer of intensity behind the revelation, an undercurrent of longing that made it quite believable to Furry just how much the process played into her past life. It was somewhat unsettling.)

A message showed up in Furry's vision as Ms. Birdy's explanation was still wrapping up, the letters blocky and fuzzy at the edges, the conventions ignored – it had obviously been constructed in the utmost of haste. [CANT BE ONE OF US SHELL LEARN PLAN BUT SOMEONE IN THERE COULD DISTRACT HER MAKE ATTACK EASIER WHO DO YOU KNOW]

"Um," Furry spoke up. "Actually… I know the hunger doesn't really bother you, so if this merge would bring the other mind closer to you… I have a friend that I would like to do it instead."


The process took a few hours of delicate manipulations by Ms. Birdy alone. Lucky's mind was removed from the sun lion body briefly and replaced into Ms. Birdy's. (It was, in fact, Furry's first time seeing a mind bare, despite all his time working with the Thought Plane. The shape of it resembled a brain, but it was an electric blue – actually electric, he guessed – and was constantly shifting between different parts crackling into and out of view as it worked.)

When it was done, she stood up, stumbling. Her gait was different now, less of a spring, less comfortable, more pained. "Oh. I can think straight again. And also I could always think straight." Even her tone, her style of speaking, was noticeably different. "I'd forgotten what this was like. And also I never experienced it before. This is all very interesting. I suppose I still – Birdy still feels like the main part of me, but then it doesn't seem like it makes quite as much sense anymore to say there's a 'main' part of me. I've certainly missed this! Usually not so much pain with it, though…"


The next couple weeks were interesting, and as they were so close to the date of execution, this was very nerve-wracking for all involved. Ms. Birdy (Furry had settled on continuing to call her that, as she did seem to remain the dominating influence on the new hybrid) was adjusting to her new identity, integrating the two minds further into her one being. For one, the changes left her lost in thought more often, startled at an interruption – she had always been alert before.

For another, she was remembering things.

"I think I'm coming to an idea of what my – Lucky's past life was like," she had recollected once, partway into the second week. "I used to work for a space company; I was a rocket engineer, but… I believe I grew apart from my family for the sake of my work. I didn't have time for both, and so I left them behind… and as I got older, and my mind started to decay, they were forced to take care of me regardless. I was only ever a burden for them…" Ms. Birdy shook her head. "But I guess that's only one part of me now, and it's over and done with anyway. At least I finally figured it out, somewhat. I still don't remember much of anything about them, though…"

But last of all, she was… less sure of her convictions about the priority of "complete" existence. She had waffled between the two choices a number of times, admitting her better understanding of the human perspective now, but still showing instinctual revulsion at the idea of turning off the souls and bodies of Webkinz.

[F to Both – Ms. Birdy really seems close to changing her mind on freeing us from our bodies. Maybe we don't need to attack her after all? We may be able to convince her.]

[A to Both – We can try. It would certainly be easier, but if she doesn't decide by the time you reach the Almond threshold, I think we will have to enact our plan regardless. You are the only one of us who will likely be able to sever the connection between realities – we can't risk losing you.]

And so they tried. Furry and Angel argued in support of shutting down Webkinz World – not too aggressively, very much trying to avoid suspicion, but consistently at the times when Ms. Birdy seemed most conflicted. Furry felt that perhaps they might have managed it with more time.

But Furry had hit 10 Almonds now, and they had agreed long ago they would risk no lower.