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The library was gone.
With a sharp, dizzying gasp, he was brought back into his body, into the present. He was not brought back to the library. He was brought back to wreckage. He was brought back to smoking rubble that surely could not be the present. Something must have gone wrong. The library was gone.
Tears stung at the corners of his eyes as the smoke hit his senses. He pulled the fabric of his now discolored hoodie over his nose and mouth. Charred scraps of paper floated in the air. Charred scraps of books. His books. His meticulously kept journals. The library was gone.
The land around him was desolate, a large scorch-mark upon the earth where a forest once flourished. The land around him was flat, no longer populated by twisting trees, spacious mushrooms, or sturdy buildings. Beyond where his kingdom should have been, there were no neon lights flashing from the desert. The pocket watch in his hand bore winding cracks across its glass face. The two rings on his finger clinked against the watch and were dull and worn.
His feet had begun to move. He did not notice he had drifted through and out of his home until a wooden board crumbled under him. A wooden board. There was nothing else to signify it, no trails or imprints in the dirt, but this board. It had been the Prime Path. It had been something bigger, something lovingly winding through the land, something connecting territories and people. The path was gone and there were no people to be seen.
It hit him suddenly. So suddenly that he thought he must be time traveling again.
The SMP was gone.
“No.”
His hoodie fell from where it had been pressed to his lower face.
“No, no, no, no. No, this can’t-”
The pocket watch slipped out of his thin fingers.
“This can’t be. This can’t be happening.”
His body swayed.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Both of his hands dragged themselves up from his sides to desperately clutch at his head.
“This doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t make sense. I did what I was supposed to.”
He began to shakily curl in on himself.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Tears pushed at the corners of his eyes and his lips felt numb around his lightly chattering teeth.
“This isn’t supposed to happen. I don’t understand.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to, Karl.” He whipped around to face a large, masked figure. Several pairs of wings burst from under his cloak, yet having no part in the way he floated above Karl.
“What-DreamXD?” Karl exclaimed as he stumbled back. Something cracked under his feet as he almost lost balance. He looked down to see it was his dropped pocket watch. He quickly looked back up at the god, eyes meeting the glow from the eyeholes of his mask.
DreamXD’s echoey voice came out plain and flat, “Yes. Tis I.” His several shadowy arms lifted out of his flowing, emerald cloak in what could have been a grand gesture if he had wanted it to be. “You are just the person I wanted to talk to.”
“Me?” Karl’s voice came out weak and strained. “What-what’s going on?” He fought against the urge to look around again, to will it to be an elaborate trick of the eye. “What happened?”
“What happened?” DreamXD repeated with an audible eyebrow raise. “Look around, Karl.” Karl didn’t look. A sigh hissed out of the god’s mask and all of his limbs drooped. “I’ll give it to you straight, man. Or as straight as I can.” He chuckled, then paused. Karl did not laugh along. DreamXD sighed again and crossed three of his arms in a contorted display of exasperation. “You messed up a perfectly good time line, Karl. Look at it, it’s got radiation poisoning.”
Karl blinked up at DreamXD with wide eyes and his voice came out thin and painfully stretched, “Radiation?” The word trailed off his tongue like smoke.
“Yup,” popped out of DreamXD’s mouth, assuming he had one. “You messed up big time. And you know what happened to the last guy that messed everything up. Wait-do you? Nah, I don’t think I ended up telling you that. You don’t wanna know, anyways.”
The feeling of his heart racing rushed through Karl, bringing another bout of trembling. “So-so everything’s just gone?” His thumb began to subconsciously twist the rings on his finger. “It can’t be fixed?”
“Nukes tend to have that effect.”
“Nukes?”
DreamXD made a shrugging motion with half the arms poking out of his cloak. “Well, you know how it is. When the going gets tough, you just gotta start over.”
Karl stumbled to the ground, clumsily situating himself into a sitting position. “Start-start over?”
“It’s kind of a hassle, to be honest. I don’t think you really understand just how much you’ve inconvenienced me.” Karl’s head dropped. His wide eyes gazed past the dirt he sat on. “I have to restart the entire server. Fresh land, plants, animals, all that. Fresh resources. The whole thing. I have to revive everyone, restore their three lives, and then individually wipe each person’s memories.” Karl’s heart stopped, his lungs stilled. “I just-really man? It feels like I just did all of this and now I have to do it all again. It’s only been, what, two years? Somewhere around there?”
Karl’s throat burned. “What do you mean ‘again’?”
DreamXD’s wings fluttered as he scoffed, “You really think multiple people on this server had memory loss problems just coincidentally?” Karl looked up with disbelief dripping down his cheeks. DreamXD held up one of his hands up to count off the names he listed, “Well let’s see, there was Ranboo, Eret, Captain Puffy-”
“I didn’t-”
DreamXD continued on, “Didn’t you ever notice how some events on this server seemed scripted? Like people’s actions were pre-written?” One of Karl’s hands bunched up his sweater while the other clutched at his hair. “Maybe it wasn’t the first time those things had happened?” Karl’s mouth opened but nothing came out. “I thought for sure that pattern would become really apparent after all your travels. But maybe you haven’t been losing just memories, maybe you’ve lost whole brain cells.”
“What do you mean ‘again’?” The repeated question was spat out and left Karl’s tongue stinging.
“Dude, were you not listening?”
“What do you mean ‘again’?!” Karl yelled up at DreamXD. He could not stand, his legs shook as much as his chest heaved. “This can’t be ‘again’! This-this isn’t okay! This is not okay!” He felt as if he was already losing his voice. “Nothing about this is okay!” Karl’s words came out in a sob. His head spun. One hand went to his forehead to stop the spinning and one hand went to his chest to stop the sobs from bursting out of him. Nothing stopped.
“Of course it’s not okay.” Karl’s eyes focused back on DreamXD in surprise. “I haven’t wiped everything clean yet.”
“My friends,” Karl whispered. “My-” he looked down at his rings, “My-”
“You don’t even remember who you’re talking about.”
Karl froze. The fact was that it was true. Karl had been forgetting more and more. Whole people had become vaguely familiar names. Whole events had become hazy wisps of a nightmare. Whole chunks of his memory were gone. Whatever he had forgotten was going to be erased outside of his brain. He would never be able to be reminded of what the name on the tip of his tongue was. Then all at once he lurched into motion. “My friends are gone!” The movement of his jaw and his arms felt robotic to him. He felt disconnected from the flailing and incomprehensible hand gestures. “All their memories-everything we did-everything we had-” He looked around in a desperate search for traces of his friends. “Why did you do all this?”
“This?” One of DreamXD’s lower arms gestured around them. “I didn’t do this.” He jabbed several clawed index fingers at Karl. “You did.” The god’s voice seemed to reverberate like a train through Karl’s ears. “That’s the whole point of this conversation. I trusted you to help keep things in order. This is nobody’s fault but your own.”
Karl stared up at DreamXD. He couldn’t tell if there were tears still dripping down his face or if he had cried out all the tears his eyes could provide. His words came out without the sharpness of anger or the heaviness of sadness. His voice was soft. “What could I have done differently?”
“What’s it matter anymore? If I tell you, you’re just going to forget.” Karl flinched at that. “All that matters is that you know you’re being demoted.” All at once, DreamXD’s several wings and arms retreated into the darkness of his billowing cloak and left the air around the god empty. DreamXD drifted down and two shadowy boots peaked out of the green cloth of his cloak just enough so that Karl could see him touch down to the ground.
Although DreamXD was still much taller and bigger than Karl, they were on equal footing. “What now?” Karl asked.
The god reached up and lifted the round mask off of his being. Karl’s breath stopped. “See you on the other side, Karl Jacobs.” A single hand was pointed at him. And then it was all gone.