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There was something humbling about knowing you were objectively not meant to exist.
Rob sighed as he lowered his binoculars. He didn’t want to buck convention, not really. It was just…happening. He would’ve been happy to just take whatever the Universe wanted from him, but apparently that was not what It wanted. It wanted him to suffer, to be aware of just enough to break him.
A foggy memory surfaced. Him, in elementary school, which meant this was a memory from either…a month or twenty years ago. Time wasn’t real anymore. Maybe it never was. Did anybody in Elmore even age?
Whatever. He remembered learning how to tell a story, all the conventions you needed to write well. Plot, characters, conflict, theme, setting. He really wished he paid better attention in that class.
Or maybe he did. Maybe he was the star student, taking dutiful notes and bringing home straight A’s and writing master fiction. Who knew? Certainly not Rob.
He wanted to throw something, to fall to his knees and rage against the heavens, but he knew better. Him just existing was a crime against the powers that be, one that left him scarred the last time he defied them. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he angered them again.
The Wattersons were the first people he met after his rebirth, and that was likely why he kept coming back to them. There was no longer any animosity towards them. How could he hate them for not saving him when they weren’t even supposed to be in the Void in the first place? He only went along with the villain idea for so long because it gave him a reason to exist, a safety net against falling back into the Void. Back then he would’ve done anything to keep himself away from that place, that horrible limbo where no one remembered you, nothing was real and nothing made sense. But now he knew, he knew the truth of it all and now everywhere was limbo. He was just the only one who realized it.
Suffice to say he wasn’t afraid of the Void anymore.
Which brought him back to now, watching Gumball and Darwin from a tree across the street. It felt right, what with them being the linchpins of the Universe, to keep an eye on them. But also it provided an odd sense of comfort, to see worst case scenarios snap back to normalcy with episodic precision. He lived vicariously through them, wishing their blithe ignorance was his own.
Right now they were at school—probably the same school from his memory, he realized. Elmore didn’t seem to have other schools. Except, of course, when it did.
It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he really ought to try to get in contact. He’d have to play the villain card, of course, that was the only way the Universe would let him interact with them—but he wouldn’t have to bear this burden alone anymore. Drop a cryptic note from Dr. Wrecker: “You are the only thing standing in the way of true destruction. Meet me in the park at midnight and—
And what? The Universe wouldn’t let him tell Gumball anything, not without some clever verbal workarounds. He’d dropped some of those during the universal remote incident and nothing had ever come of it. Weeks later, he concluded that Gumball must not have picked up on them. Gumball was a good protagonist, but like so many kid heroes he could be an idiot.
Oh yeah, and he’d stopped being able to view the people around him as people, only as characters in the grand cosmic play they didn’t know they were performing. Just another way the Universe made sure he’d never be able to connect with anyone ever again.
He watched the schoolkids file out, exchanging idle dialogue before exiting to their next scenes— their homes, Rob, they’re going home, they’re people not characters, your world is real not fictional—
Gumball and Darwin were the last to exit, and once they were gone, the air seemed to still as the sky itself darkened on Elmore Junior High, like an unused set piece in a theater.
Rob scrambled down from the tree and hurried across the street. He stood in front of the school in all its deserted glory and cleared his throat.
“Um…hey,” he said aloud. He would’ve felt more sheepish about addressing no one if he didn’t already know about the Powers That Be. “Can we talk?”
The air shifted, violently. Rob wasn’t sure what that meant, other than that someone was listening.
“Listen, big fan here, really,” he said. “Just wondering, you know, if I could have a sign or something? Not asking for special treatment, just being here’s more than enough—thanks for that, by the way—but, um, I’ve been feeling super lost lately and—as you can imagine, there’s not really anyone else I can turn to. So…yeah?”
There was no response. Not even another shift of wind.
Rob looked down, idly prodding a pebble with his wireframe foot. “Okay. Thanks anyway.”