Some alien wants to hug me… Why are my smirks so alluring?
The universe is massive.
Really, it's so massive that contemplating its sheer actual size is far beyond the human experience. "It's even bigger than you think it is," I could tell the astrophysicists and the kids who are only allowed to watch public television. "It's like super-dee-duper huge, with a shit-ton of zeroes or ones or whatever. Don't even try to calculate just how big it is because you will fail, and I will laugh while munching a pizza and thinking about that star cluster in Sagittarius that's shaped like a top hat. Amazing what you will never, ever see. Oh, sorry, that's patronizing, isn't it. My sincerest Prussian apologies."
But the reality is, I've seen the whole universe myself, and it's not that big.
It's not like I'm omniscient. I couldn't describe the entire universe because even if I did see all of it, I only saw each piece for fractions of fractions of seconds. I can barely remember what it all looked like or how complex or strange it is at points. All I know is that… it just isn't that big. It has an end and beyond, just like Jeffrey Jey believes. Things with end are finite. They have a set volume. They can be measured. Yes, the universe is constantly expanding, but that equation has been calculated and can be applied to whatever precise measurements are taken.
When you've actually seen the end and beyond, the universe is not that big.
My universe is like a fruit bowl. At the center is the most beautiful, dew-sparkling orange, representing its perfect, most accurate essence that can't be described. It's like the orange is everything that exists, and the rind is what exists based on what an author tells you.
Beyond the orange is a pool of floating blackberries. Call these your "fanworks." They're not always accurate. In fact, many of them aren't. The farther they float from the orange, the less accurate to the source material they become. At the edge of the bowl are lumpy, rotted pears, representing my universe at its least accurate. These are your "crack fics" and "Sad America" fics and most fics involving babies and the fics where I'm dead, etc. Beyond that is Anticanon, the world of dreams and thoughts not yet manifested into being.
The universe is not that big, because most of it is just replications of replications dumping their similarity into a common blob of expanding spacedust. There are millions of suns. Millions of earths. Millions of Prussias, dead and alive. And the edge of the universe is nothing but an empty field of Anticanon separating the entire concept of my universe from Clarence or some shit.
Anyway, remember when I said there was a toga guy at the gates of the afterlife who told me I can't die because a bunch of women from other universes wouldn't like it?
Yeah, those aliens are real, and sometimes they find me.
They can't find me in the real world, thank goodness! Interdimensional travel is impossible for non-ascended beings like myself. Try to venture anywhere beyond your dream world, and you'll be ripped apart atom by atom only to end up as 4-D worm food, and then as 4-D worm poop, and then void dust for about a billion years before the space sharks reharvest your consciousness and pop it into a baby panda.
Honestly, I wish that was only a surreal meme I saw yesterday.
But in the Anticanon, the world of dreams, you can see any universe, manifest any great creation, meet any wonderful character, and do for fun what I have to do for a living, which is screw up space-time enough that I get yelled at and have to put it back the way it was.
Today, to avoid such a yelling, I decided to warp myself into the Anticanon.
And just like last time, I have a feeling I'm going to be accosted.
It's a beach scene. Gray-white sand, black water, rocky cliffs, cabins on the ridge, and plenty of beachy patrons milling about with their neon tops and the abominations that are socks. I tilt my head toward the sky. The blackening overhang of heavy clouds indicates it will rain soon, so deciding I'll go for a change of scenery, I float up a few feet and snap my fingers.
Nothing happens.
I snap harder. Harder. This usually works! Where's the battlefield? Where's my old castle and little Germany? Where's the marshmallow factory? Hey, I'm the only man I know who can will himself into a dream of a marshmallow factory and stay there for days and days if he wished.
"Prussia?"
Oh, please no.
I turn around, and standing not too far from the edge of the cliff is a young woman, staring at me as if my face is melting off. I give her a nervous twitch of my almost-invisible eyebrows, and she beams.
And when she beams, an invisible force starts dragging me forward by the heels. I try to resist, but it's got me tight, and my legs go absolutely numb! Forward go my legs, and back go my shoulders. I flail my arms, but resistance is futile…
Yes, I am familiar with Q.
The woman is calling up to the sky. The rain clouds begin to dissipate and speedily drift away like chalk washing out of the pavement, and blue sky blossoms above until it's sunshiny heaven on the beach.
"Ach, so it's your dream," I mutter once my heels stop making tracks in the sand and I'm allowed to move again. "How did I accidentally warp into someone's dream again? No, impossible. Was I summoned again? The women… these fangirls… they're growing more powerful… "
"Hi, Prussia," the woman says. She smiles at me again, then opens her arms wide. "Can I have a hug, please?"
Now, this has happened to me a number of times, and I've learned the best thing to do is just give the woman who summoned me the best hug I can because these must be the ones the toga guy was talking about — the ones from other universes who believe my death would be an abomination, thus unconsciously keeping me alive. The best I can do is make them happy so I can keep my powers and Germany won't accidentally flip a table when he feels me die again.
"Sure, of course you can have one!" I say, giving her my best smirk. Oh, they love the smirks. "My hugs feel like the iron from the core of Jupiter was crushed into powder, mixed with sugar, sprinkled with stardust, and crushed into the greatest sword in the universe, which is planted at your feet before I reveal myself to be a prince who has come to liberate you from your stifling dorm room and sweep you up into a castle. "
She just nods at this. I doubt she heard all of it, being only a dream projection of herself.
I reach in and let her wrap her arms around my chest, flexing my shoulder muscles. Then I squeeze her tight and let her nuzzle her cheek into me a bit. It's crazy. I could make myself fluffy, and these alien women already treat me like I'm the fluffiest puppy they know!
She rubs her hands in circles upon my back. (Seriously, how do they know I like that!? They know too much…) I repeat the motion, continuing to squeeze until she's satisfied. When she pulls away, she's so giddy she's floating. I float a bit, myself, and she gasps.
"So cool."
"I know, right? I'm the coolest! So keep loving me, okay!?"
Keep loving me? I sound like some casanova. Keep this up, and I'll have aliens swarming me. Better to stick with the Jupiter analogies for maximum dorkiness. But even that's a little much. Jupiter has always rubbed me the wrong way. Gassy windbag like Austria that doesn't deserve an entire symphonic hymn.
But I've lost her attention. "I want to hug Italy, too!" She says.
Oh boy.
Italy, or, an Italy, rises up out of the sand not too far from where I'm floating. He has that ditzy look on his face, and his limbs are all wiggly like rubber. I can't be sure of his sentience. I can never be sure of anything in the Anticanon. Some people I see are real dreamers, and others are just manifestations of thought, and then there are chaotic little whorls of space dust that shape themselves into whatever they see fit.
Looking at this Italy closer, I can tell he's only a manifestation of the woman's desires. He's a lot less hairy than the real Italy, especially on his chest, which looks basically shaved. He also looks a little flat, almost like he's half-cartoon. His eyes are bigger. His expression is spacier. His fingers are way shorter and chubbier.
I call these creatures "wet noodles." They look like Italy. They can even sound like Italy. But they never have the charm or the intelligence of the real Veneziano. All they're really good for is giving hugs and babbling about pasta, which isn't that far off from the real Vene, yet not everything Italy is as a person. The wet noodle is the beta Italy. The proto Italy. The free version of Italy.
I've been talking to Japan too much.
It's how she imagines him, I think. Must be the way her universe portrays him. I'm just appearing to her the way I naturally appear, and she still recognized me. Good on that author's part.
She cuddles with the fake Italy for a little while until they're both laughing and shaking with joy. Then she turns around, and he vanishes.
"Hey, chirpy chick from another world," I whistle at her. She turns and marvels at how I'm still on the scene. "So, are you a writer, or something?"
"Yeah, I write about you," she says, playing with her hands.
"Well, write me obnoxious, not mopey," I tell her. "And don't forget I'm not dead!"
"Prussia, you crazy man, you're never dead," she laughs before disintegrating entirely as her consciousness leaves this plane. Her body kind of gently dissolves into points of light that float like sparks upward into the darkening void of the sky. I wish that when Germany summoned me with the butter knife I just floated away in a pile of sparkles instead of my body exploding into messy glitter all the time.
I write about you, she said.
Sometimes at night, I lie in bed and wonder just how many Prussias there are out there based on how many of these women "write about me." Do they know their ultimate fate? Are they scared of the future? Have they already died and come back like I have, or have they gone for good, only to come back in some twisted cosmic loophole? Are they all humanoid, or is there some world where nations are trees or gods or frogs or fairies? Are they even all nations? Is there a Prussia who was never Prussia? Can he die, or does the rule still apply to him?
It's too much to think about, even for me. I let myself phase out of the Anticanon. My ears pop, and my skin feels cold as reality distorts around my body like oil in water. In a second, I'm no longer on the beach, but in the chair at my desk in my cream-colored room.
I hear a high-pitched shriek from behind me.
Oh, please no.
The chair slowly oscillates around, and my magenta-stained eyes connect with a pair of amber-gold before I thrust my body forward and fall into the void of nonexistence again.
That was the real Italy.
~N~
Inspired by a dream I had. There wasn't any dialogue, but I did get to hug both Prussia and Italy.
Updated by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 1st, 2020. Keep being obnoxious! Don't repost.