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rick carefully locks the door behind him, so he can focus on his grandson. so he can lord himself over morty and explain his plans and rant about sauce.
then the garage door closes too. they’re alone.
morty doesn’t want to be there. it’s a dark clamshell of a place made only for rick. morty often spends his time there, but it always feels alien. it doesn’t feel like part of his house, or even the earth.
when the doors are closed, morty feels like they're the only two people who exist. but there's nothing special about the garage, really. he could run anywhere, continents or worlds away, and never be able to escape rick. no one would ever give half a shit about morty or get in rick's way for his sake.
it explains why his family don’t seem to notice or do anything. no one else is real. rick just imagined every universe around them and that’s why it all bends to his will.
it could even be that rick is the only person who actually exists and he just thought morty into being. when morty says he doesn’t want what’s going to happen, rick doesn’t hear anything. yet he looks at morty like there’s something there to see, like the boy will vanish without rick’s eyes on him. his grandson fills his thoughts when his genius mind should be so busy, so occupied elsewhere.
morty doesn't like it. he thought he wanted someone to think about him a long time ago, but not anymore. when rick is this excited, no one knows what the man is going to do. no one except morty. he has an idea of what comes next and he has no say in it.
it's just like when morty was under the effect of the megaseeds again: on the ground, unable to do much of anything, with rick standing above him like a god obsessed with his own creation, practically shaking apart from the power and energy that his body can barely contain.
morty is just an idea in rick’s head, made from his genes and his thoughts and his mysterious desires - just a concept that rick solidifies more and more with his hands, wringing him hard, drawing out moisture: sweat and tears and blood and--
morty’s as inhuman as rick makes him feel after all. he’s rick’s coat folded on a chair, his hammer in hand, the watch on his wrist. morty is a thing with an owner. the only difference is that most objects don’t feel pain at being used.
he only exists when rick thinks of him, looks at him, makes him - like a ball of dough by a baker or a form in marble by a sculptor - and doesn’t linger for even a moment longer. morty used to think he had some will, that people had some autonomy - but with god walking on earth, it’s all just one big toolbox for him. even his own family probably exists just to serve rick’s purposes.
what is morty’s purpose anyway? he thinks of the butter robot rick made. it had easily gotten morty a good grade, but that doesn’t change the fact it shouldn’t have been created. it exists to pass butter. it also exists to suffer that fact. morty is not much different in his helplessness.
rick uses his grandson until he’s satisfied, then he smiles at morty, as if a person were in front of him. morty can’t figure out why... after all, the man is completely alone.