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Chapter Seventeen

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Aline was floating in a sea of nothingness. She had no body, no consciousness.

These things came back to her slowly.

Whiteness all around.

Everything and everyone was gone. How could she be the only one left?

Then the whiteness started to fade, until she could feel solid ground under her feet.

Aline was in a room.

A kitchen, actually. At first she thought it was her kitchen, but then she realized it resembled the kitchen in the last house she'd lived in more. And then she realized it wasn't her kitchen at all.

Everything was so detailed.

The linoleum was off-white, big squares interspersed with little red ones. Every speck of dirt and irregular coloring was noticeable and present. The cabinets were a shade of warm brown, the fake-wood pattern so fine, the reflection of the overhead light so hypnotizing.

There were some crumbs on the floor. The light from the sunset outside the sliding glass door threw them into stark relief. The tablecloth on the rather small round kitchen table was just slightly askew. The fridge, humming gently, has exactly eight small magnets on it. The oven door had a Rosie the Riveter towel draped over the handle, hung there haphazardly.

The counter had a scrap of paper towel lying on it, some coffee mugs, a bag of Goldfish.

It was the realest room she'd ever seen.

She was so distracted gaping at everything that it took her until that moment to notice that she wasn't alone.

A girl was sitting at a desk lodged in the corner, typing.

Aline wondered how she'd react to having a strange person suddenly appear in her kitchen. Probably not well. Maybe she could sneak out the sliding glass door…

Just then the girl stopped typing. She got up, turned, and appraised Aline. She didn't seem surprised to see her at all.

"God," she said, breaking into a huge grin, "Look at you! Just how I imagined." She looked so pleased to see her that she had to cover her smile with her hands.

"Uh?" Aline said.

Just then she realized something. This girl…was her. An older Aline. Her hair was red with brown roots, not blonde, and cut shorter than hers. And she was rather shorter, not much taller than D, and a lot curvier, but maybe that's what happened when you got out of the awkward side of puberty.

But the face was practically the same.

Okay, not entirely—darker skin, fuller lips, way more eyelashes, thick eyebrows that definitely didn't disappear into blondness like Aline's—but totally the same nose, the same face shape. Green eyes with dark lashes, instead of her watery blue color and nearly invisible lashes, but otherwise, totally the same eyes. And the same mannerisms. She was fiddling with a piece of her hair the exact same way Aline had been just a second ago.

"Oh my god," Aline said, "You're me!"

"You're right!" the girl said, beaming, but then wobbled her hand in an ambiguous gesture. "Uh, kind of. Not exactly."

Aline waved her arms around. "But you look like me!"

"I only kind of look like you. Who else do I look like?" the strange girl challenged.

Now that she thought about it, Nikki had the same haircut as her. Just in different colors. And there was something Jenna-y in that huge grin she'd flashed earlier.

"Okay," Aline sighed, crossing her arms. She was feeling pretty proud of herself for not freaking out all that much. "Okay, so this is weird."

"Super weird," the older girl agreed, in the same tone of voice Aline would have used. "Looks like somebody broke the Fourth Wall. And I mean really broke it."

Everything came rushing back. Aline panicked. "Oh my god! The Wall! The battle!" She started pacing back and forth, tugging at her hair. She whirled back to the older girl, pleading. "Look, you have to send me back! My, uh—friends?—are in trouble! Reality is about the end!"

The girl just waved a hand. "Don't worry about all that. Everyone's fine. You used a Deus ex Machina, didn't you?"

"Oh…yeah, I did," Aline said haltingly, "but…Marie broke the Fourth Wall…I thought…" Her eyes widened. "But then you're…"

"Mhm," the girl said. "I'm the Author."

"No way," Aline gasped.

"Yes way," the Author corrected.

"Wow," Aline said, tilting her head. "I can't believe the almighty Author is a teenage girl."

"Actually, I'm nineteen, so—only barely still a teenage girl."

"Wow," Aline said, awed. "So you're like…basically God. Like…you created everything, right? Oh man. No friggin way."

"Ah, well," the Author laughed, rubbing the back of her head, "You could say that."

Aline raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What?"

"I mean, I created you, sure," the Author explained hastily. "Hey, you're basically like, eleven-year-old-me, aged up a bit. I even imagined your house looking like the house I lived in when I was that age, first trying to get some writing published on the internet. And oh my god. It's so cool to meet you. I made you up and you're really here!"

"Wow," Aline said. "Uh, thanks. You too, I guess. So…everything? You really made up everything?"

"That's right."

"So Jenna is—"

"Me when I was eight, but with the long hair I had in high school."

"And D is—"

"Me when I was fourteen. But with a cool trench coat, because I got one at a thrift store once and thought it was awesome, but then I only wore it once on Halloween. Oh, but then I got an idea for the whole Four Horsepersons and apocalypse thing, and she kinda got away from me. You guys do that sometimes. Love when that happens!" the girl chirped.

"What about Nikki?"

"Oh, her." The Author shrugged. "I have no idea about her. I'm sure I'm in her somewhere. There's some of me in everything, you could say."

Aline sat down, processing all this.

"I can't believe you're the Author."

The Author snorted. "Why? Expecting someone else?"

"Well…yeah," Aline admitted. "Maybe some kind of distinguished older gentleman smoking a pipe in a library."

"Sorry to disappoint, but I'm all you get."

"Yeah, yeah, I just…I can't believe it. And I especially can't believe," Aline said, hyperventilating a little, "that I'm just a shitty self-insert OC. That's…embarrassing." She buried her face in her hands.

"Hey," the Author said, crossing her arms, "You're a lot more than that! You're your own person!"

Aline looked up. "Am I?"

The Author hesitated. "No, not really. You're a character in a story. But then…so am I."

Aline stopped hyperventilating. She raised her head and narrowed her eyes. "What now?"

The Author gestured all around her. "Where do you think we are?"

"The Real World, right?" Aline guessed. "That's where you go when the Fourth Wall breaks."

"If this were the Real World, would I be able to do this?" The Author waved her hands, and suddenly the kitchen dissolved away. They were standing on thin air, looking down at the battle, everything frozen in place at the moment where Marie broke the Fourth Wall and Aline smashed the Dues ex Machina. Aline could see herself, weakened and delirious, smashing the button, her eyes squeezed closed.

"Maybe?" Aline said, unsure.

"How about this?"

They appeared on a tropical beach, lounging under a palm tree and sipping cordial from half-coconuts.

"I don't see why not," Aline said. "Mmm. Coconut milk."

The Author sighed. "And this?" They appeared on top of a snowy mountain, freezing winds whipping.

"Sure. You're God, aren't you? You can do whatever."

"I'm God," the Author said. "But only here." She waved her hand again and they found themselves sitting at the kitchen table again, this time sipping tea. Really good tea. "This isn't quite the Real World," the Author explained. "It's one level of abstraction away from it. If this were the Real World, I'd just be another powerless chump, trying to make my way in my confusing, tumultuous life."

"So…"

"I'm not actually the Author," admitted the Author. "I'm Her abstraction. I'm a fictional representation of the Author, written to resemble the real one as closely as possible. She's the one who's writing this conversation, by the way."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"So the realAuthor is still just some fake redhead who isn't even wearing a bra."

"When did your character development get so sassy? Geez. But yeah, you're right. The real Author is currently writing this whole scene in a kitchen just like this one. Only that's a Real kitchen, and this one is made of words, and only really exists in people's imaginations."

"But Marie wanted to kill you. Or, I guess, the Real Author. So not you?"

The Author sighed and set her teacup down. "To be perfectly honest, Marie's plan was…kind of insane. There's no possible way for Marie to have ever killed Her. She could have killed me, sure. I exist on basically the same fictional plane as her. You were able to travel to the Hub and meet all those fictional characters because you exist on basically the same plane as them. Slightly different levels of abstraction, sure, but…still just words on a page."

The Author leaned back, contemplating. "But killing me wouldn't have actually freed her. Maybe given her the illusion of freedom that she so craved. And that would probably have been enough. Hell, I could probably let myself die for her sake. I'm just a temporary omnipotent thought structure, I could always come back. But I figured this scene with you would be more interesting. Anyway, for all intents and purposes of this scene, I'm the Author, manifesting on this plane of existence for your convenience. It's pretty Jesus-y, really. So if you have anything to say, you can go ahead now."

Aline sipped her tea.

"So Marie was right," she said. "I don't have free will or depth or anything. I really am just…a character in a story. And once the story's over…poof."

"Sorry to say, but it's true," the Author said. "But don't worry. You'll probably get an epilogue chapter where you get over it and live happily ever after. I mean, I wouldn't put you through all this shit you've dealt with without even giving you a happy ending. You're my favorite character in this story, after all."

"Well, thanks," Aline said, mistrustful. "How do I know you're not lying?"

"You don't," the Author said cheerily. "But if I were to write that all of a sudden, you implicitly trusted me and everything I said, you totally would."

All of a sudden, Aline implicitly trusted her and everything that she said.

"Damn it," she growled.

The Author smiled innocently.

Aline stared at her tea. "Hey, so, kind of a related heavy question…Am I sentient?"

"Do you feel sentient?" the Author said kindly.

"Yes…I mean, I think so," Aline amended. "But maybe I'm just saying that because that's what is being written that I say. Maybe you're only making me think I'm conscious."

"The thing is…" The Author bit her lip. "You gotta stop thinking of yourself as like, your own separate thing. You're part of my imagination. Part of my sentience. Or, uh, Her sentience. You're part of something bigger than—I'm serious here—bigger than you can even possibly imagine. You see how real this room looks to you? The actual Real World would break your brain. Because you're not real, and it is."

She had to admit. It stung to hear that. All her life she'd known she wasn't important…but this was really unimportant.

"But that doesn't mean you're not important," the Author insisted. "We're all part of the universe, here. The Author is part of Her universe, something so vast and incredible that neither She nor anybody else on Her level of existence has any idea about it. I mean, why do you look like me? Because, to some extent, you are me. You are the Author. She can't talk directly to you, because She is you. It would be pointless. God doesn't talk directly to anybody because He is everybody. Get it?"

"Uh, no. Kinda. Maybe."

"That's only because you're not supposed to."

"Okay. But, really," Aline said, "How am I supposed to go back to my life knowing all this? Knowing I'm just an extension of someone else's consciousness?"

The Author flicked Aline's forehead. "No, dummy, it's not someone else, it's you. Nobody has their own consciousness. We're all part of something bigger here. This is the kind of existential shit that Real people have to deal with, too. If you can't handle a little bit of existential terror, well, you're just like everybody else. Most people just don't come right up to it like you are right now."

"Huh," she said. "Well. Okay. Can I ask what the whole point of this scene was?"

The Author shrugged. "Well, if one character is breaking upward into a higher level of abstraction, and another is summoning a God from the Machine, and I really want to talk about some philosophy in this stupid fanfiction story to make it seem less dumb, what else can I do? You met God. What more do you want?"

"And God has a bad dye job and fuzzy socks."

"Basically."

"So what's going to happen now? Back down in the Hub?"

The Author sucked in air through her teeth. "Well, let's see. I'll repair the Fourth Wall, send you on your way, and things will wrap up. The story's almost over, after all. You'll get to grow up, do what you want with your life."

"What do I want with my life, though?"

"On some level, the same thing I want."

Aline's eyebrow scrunched. "What if I want something else?"

"Then that will happen instead."

"Oh. Good."

"Right. So," the Author stood and clapped her hands, "I think it's time for this silly scene to end. Let's stop playing havoc with the Fourth Wall and get back to the real story, whatever's left of it."

"Alright," Aline agreed. She stood too.

"Hey, wait," she said suddenly. "When I get to be as old as you…Am I gonna look like you? I mean, do I get boobs and killer eyebrows, too?"

The Author laughed. "Sweetheart, trust me, I'm all-powerful and you're a vicarious extension of myself. You're turning out way hotter than me."

Aline gave her a thumbs up.

And then, the too-real kitchen, and the Author, were gone.