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And then, you died.
Where is this?
You feel like you're blinking in and out of existence. Colors and mayhem, psychedelic syncopations, flavored Mandelbrot sets and Sierpinski triangles, mobius double rainbow all the way across the fractal sky, and you slowly realize that you understand jack shit.
But through this luminiferous ether, you see a distinct bright red something coming towards you. A someone.
"Aradia!?"
"Hi Nepeta," she says, and smiles. Wow that is weird, it's the same sweet smile that you only almost fail to remember, from a much younger incarnation of that face. "I'm an alternate version of the Aradia you knew. Welcome to the dreambubbles. I'm here to be your guide to your next great adventure."
"Alternate version? How come you're not a robot? And that's a god tier outfit right? Wow, you're a god tier!"
"The game creates many timelines, which you can kind of think of as parallel universes. I’m not a robot because I'm alive! And I am god tier!"
"So...in the living world, you are dead, and in the afterlife, you are alive?"
"Haha, it turns out that way."
"Parallel universes...?"
"As you journey through the afterlife, you will meet many iterations of your friends, and many iterations of you, who have converged here from different timelines. Timelines are another game construct, mediated by Skaia. You know that one choice you made, well, there exists a you out there who made a different choice, a you who did a different thing. That's who they are, that's what makes these parallel universes."
You try to process that. "Umm, that's hard to understand."
"It's hard to try to describe these abstract concepts, I still haven't had enough practice! ...Sollux has said that the best metaphor for it was a version control system... I would trust the resident Hero of Doom."
"What's a furrsion control system?"
"It's -" she shakes her head. "Never mind, it's just one of those things you learn when you hang out with him too much." You have to chuckle a bit in sympathy, because knowing Equius has certainly taught you too much about low-pass filters and high-pass filters and nude musclebeasts!
Aradia tries again. "Choices and coincidences, split the session across time into different branching timelines. But there's only one branch, the one that Paradox Space wants to keep working on, that’s the alpha, and the rest, they're doomed, and so they're destructed." She perks up. "Despite how it seems, it wasn't for nothing, didn't some wise troll once say, that failure is the mother of success? We've discovered a thousand ways not to create a new universe!” She beams at you, but you can’t match that enthusiasm.
“...And anyway it's great that you're dead, you're not doomed anymore."
"Wow... yeah, being doomed is bad!" You guess. You think a little more. “How do you know about all this? Does it have to do with being a Time player?"
She nods. "...This is what I would do. Not me, but the other iterations of me. When a timeline was doomed, I would see that their fate was sealed, and leave the timeline, never to come back. Most of them would die horribly, as you did, I presume. I would fix the deviation, in order to aid the alpha timeline." Her voice is unnaturally level. "That is, the doomed incarnations of me, would."
She pauses. “I'm alpha."
"Well, um." You don't know what to say. "Congratulations." That's not the right thing to say.
She looks somewhere out into the distance. "I also wanted to say that I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? Sorry that I was doomed? Sorry that I'm dead? How is that any of your fault?"
"No, not because it was my fault. Even though the doomed iterations of me served the ends of my timeline, and not theirs, I always would have done what I would have had to do, there's no use to regret."
"Then what are you apologizing fur?"
"As a matter of courtesy."
"Of courtesy?"
"They left without saying anything. That's not nice... after all. Courtesy," she proclaims, "is the grease that oils the gears that move the world."
"No, that's love!” You correct reflexively.
"Hmm. But love leaves resins of amber, jamming the gears, preventing people from moving on."
"That's why you need shipping! To oil the gears." That is the truth, and there is no truth before it. Aradia looks a moment incredulous, but remains silent already. "And apologizing for something that wasn't your fault? That's at least a little weird!"
"...I've found that it's useless to try to assign blame for these things." She does this dramatic flourish with her hand. "Now...there's a story I like to tell..."
"It's a story of ancient mythology...the gods gave a mortal a box, and told him to never open it. But the mortal, in a fit of rage against the gods, opened the box, and unleashed upon trollkind all the calamities that haunt us." Aradia pauses a moment. "Now, was that the gods' fault, or the mortal's fault?"
She looks at you expectantly, so you do your best to answer. "...Let's see. The mortal opened the box. But why would the gods give the mortal a box if they never meant for him to open it?"
"The gods wanted to show off what they could do, to the mortal."
"Well, that's kind of douchey."
"You would think," Aradia continued, "but what if I told you that, as a result of that...a trickster god was prevented from bringing about the end of trollkind, and that the opening of the box also happened to be necessary for the perpetuation of existence itself, and the hope for a new beginning. And what if I said, that because of that... a messenger of fate orchestrated the actions of both gods and mortals so that the box would be opened?"
"Hmm," you say, trying to look all grave and serious, because Aradia sounds all grave and serious.
"I just don't think there's much blame to be thrown around for all that," she says. She twirls to face you. "Apology doesn't mediate responsibility. Apology doesn't make a difference in the final outcome. Apology is for people. That's why.” She offers.
That's how she works, then. "Okay. Apology accepted."
It has been done, and silence takes its place. It settles in, and soon, Aradia begins easing its decay, with pensive eyes. "I sometimes wonder...if Skaia...ensures that there is an alpha timeline no matter what. No matter what I do. Then...there is no need to serve it.”
But that’s just like...you can also keep on wishing that prey would hunt itself, but then you won’t have food. “But purrhaps that blasé attitude just leads to a null session! Who knows!"
"Hmm...yes, I wouldn't say our session was a null session. How about this...a mobius double reacharound session?" You wonder what in the name of Cat happened in the alpha timeline. Aradia lets out a sigh. "Ah well, someone needs to serve necessity. And if not me then who."
You grin to reassure. "Haha, that's the spurrit!”
But hold on a moment, because there's one thing you have to say. "But if you're going to apologize to me when it's not your fault then you should apologize to the doomed Aradiabots too!"
She stares. "But the doomed Aradiabots are me. What use is there to apologize to myself?" She catches her surprise. "They knew what was happening. It was their choice."
"What diffurrence does that make? Like me, Purrdox Space somehow decided that they're not going to get to be the alpha furrsion of Aradia who gets to go fairy god tier. Purrdox Space still chose one over the other, for no good reason! They have to live with that too. Er, be dead with that too. ...afterlive with that too? They had to either stay or leave and they were forced into making a choice you never had to make! Just like how I somehow wasn't alpha!Nepeta, so now you're apologizing to me. I don't see how your - er, the other Aradia's, situation is that diffurrent from mine, really!"
Aradia's face remains blank. It's one of those rare times when she shows what’s backstage: the gears spinning ceaselessly inside her head, never reaching a verdict. She comments, "But apologize to me? A dead robot..."
Aradia lets the silence hang for a while, and then concedes. "...who wasn't emotionless, I suppose." She smiles. "...It's still weird though, apologizing to myself."
"You really should though! For yourself!"
"Thank you, Nepeta. I'll see about it." She adds, "all in good time."