Chapter Text
I
The void wasn’t only a place. It also had eyes and ears and a mouth. It did not need to stretch. It didn’t need to sit and wait to welcome Elmore’s mistakes with open (metaphorical) arms. It didn’t need to move, to threaten residents and people, or cleave itself open like a black hole. It didn’t need to insert itself into the smallest corners and crevices of the universe, waiting for a moment to act.
No, it did not, for it also could walk.
The void existed, but it also existed through Gumball.
II
There was barely any continuity in Elmore.
Things rarely strung themselves together, events and words and feelings, grappling on like threadbare yarn, only for it to splinter and fray, pieces of it falling to the ground. It was rough. Bumpy. A patchwork quilt of mismatched fabrics. But it was also textured. Personalized. Never lacking in life. It existed because it was there, bubbliness and normality wrapped in the sheer chaotic, spontaneous energy just brimming under the town.
Gumball swiveled his ears around. Nearby, Bobert was starting to malfunction. Again. Seemed like he didn’t get the update he so desired. He picked up his pace, reaching for his locker just as the robot exploded in a storm of smoke and sparks. Based on the fact that the robot could barely get a single sentence out before glitching, they’d be lucky if the fire alarm didn’t go off before lunch. He kind of hoped it did. He really didn’t want to do that pop quiz today in Miss Simian's class.
“—so as I was saying before I was oh so rudely interrupted,” Gumball sniffed. “You can market just about anything to the general public if you hide enough of the unsavory details and cover them up with lies that people would like to assume are the truth. It’s like a homeless person asking for money only to use it for a lottery ticket. You would assume because you gave it to them that they would use it for food, but really, because they have the liberty to do whatever they want with the money you gave them, it’s perfectly fine that they use the money for a lottery ticket.”
“But wouldn’t that defeat the point of them asking for money?” Darwin asked. “Wouldn’t they need food eventually? And those things can be addictive. Mrs. Mom even said so.”
“Yeah, but the situation is purely hypothetical,” Gumball reminded. “It isn’t technically wrong to use the money on a lottery ticket. You just assumed that they would use it for food. It’s like marketing. What people buy can be based purely on assumptions, even if they’re wrong.”
“But lying is wrong. Even if it’s for money.”
“Again, they’re assumptions. If a person assumes something and the other doesn’t correct it, then is it really their fault?”
“Yes.” Anais looked up from her book. “It’s called lying by omission.”
“But would it be so wrong when you don’t tell the lie yourself?” Gumball asked.
Anais stared at him as if he was dumb and closed her book. “My turn for an example. If Darwin somehow figured out that Elmore Crossing was coming out a month early, but didn’t tell you at all, wouldn’t you feel betrayed?”
Darwin gasped. “I would never do that.”
“It’s hypothetical.”
“Well my dear, sweet sister of mine, that situation wasn’t what I was trying to refer to.” He petted her head and quickly drew his hand away when she tried to crush it with her ridiculously thick book. “For one, Elmore Crossing, while a good game, simply isn’t my preferred genre. Secondly, in that scenario, I never specifically asked him and he went with my assumption, so technically, he was never asked directly about the release date of the game, so I wouldn’t call it lying by omission.”
Darwin nodded at him. “He’s right.”
“But it does. It falls directly under the category of ‘lying by omission.’ It’s when you purposely omit information that would otherwise prove useful to another party. Or would signify trust. Lying by omission—and this may come as a surprise to you—has the word lying in it, so it’s still morally wrong.”
Darwin nodded at Anais. “She’s right.”
“But the action itself isn’t directly responsible for the consequences,” he argued, “If you don’t say anything, sure it’s inconvenient, but the lack of awareness from the corresponding parties—whether they actually buy something without reading the labels properly, or buy a lottery ticket over food—doesn’t make the action itself wrong. If you keep a secret or two or do something directly opposing what another person thinks, it doesn’t mean you should be ostracized for simply keeping the secret.”
“But you still kept the secret,” Anais emphasized, “The consequences may have been prevented if you simply said something. You may have gotten Elmore Crossing on time if Darwin said something. Now, you have to wait until they restock, or pay for shipping from a different area, or not get it for a while. Isn’t that more inconvenient than just saying something upfront?”
“But how could the consequences have been anticipated?” he asked. “It’s not like a person wanted all that bad stuff to happen by not saying anything. They just didn’t say anything! It isn’t like a person is entitled to everything about a person.”
“They aren’t,” she agreed. “But there’s a stark difference between being entitled to knowing something and it being good to know something when given the situation. If someone was selling you a product, wouldn’t you like to know if it had something dangerous in it before you either bought it or it’s recalled possibly years later?”
He scoffed. “Now you’re just being pessimistic. Why would anyone sell stuff that hurts people?”
“Weren’t you just talking about how anything could be sold if you cover the truth about it enough?” She raised an eyebrow. “People do that, you know.”
“Like with Daisy Flakes ?” he challenged.
“Of course,” she agreed. “The sugar content is extremely high, and I accept that while eating them.”
“Because you want to. You chose to eat them. If you accept the risks, then what’s the harm?”
“Trust. Genuine care for your consumers. Common decency. I can name more if you want.”
Gumball wanted to retort, but the fire alarm suddenly went off, abruptly cutting off the conversation.
Looks like I may not get to take that quiz after all.
III
Gumball thought it was normal until recently.
It was embarrassing, really. It was one of those things that he never talked about because it never bothered him and he thought everyone had something akin to it, so he never particularly said anything about it. Looking back at it, there were certainly signs. A number of them, actually.
One of his first memories consisted of staring at the television, wondering why he felt so unsettled whenever it wouldn’t get a signal. Mom used to say he’d cry as a baby whenever he heard static. He screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors when Dad once tried a white noise machine to get him to sleep. And yet, he couldn’t stand the quiet for long either unless he was asleep. He wanted noise—but not just any noise, the bustling sounds of life. Washing the dishes. Snores when sleeping. Off-key singing. Cars riding down the road. A television (with a good signal) being left turned on. The sound of people walking up and down the stairs. And talking. He loved the sound of hearing people talk.
As he got older and his memories became less reliant on the stories from his parents, he started to notice those things for himself: he still didn’t like complete silence. He wanted to move around whenever he could: especially around town. He had a lot of memories in the park, playing in the sandbox and hearing the birds chirp. People walking and jogging about. Squirrels moving about. The buzzing of bees in his ears.
As he got even older and his siblings came along, a quiet house became rare, and as much as his parents probably yearned for it, he was selfishly happy that it was rarely quiet. Even at night, if he listened hard enough, he could hear the rustling of animals outside the house. But on its own, his preference for noise wasn’t something to raise an alarm about. Sure, it was strange, but Gumball hardly counted as a normal child even without . . . this.
Most of it didn’t start popping up until he started attending school. He didn’t know everyone, but he somehow knew everyone, in a way. No one ever really confided in him, but there were always clues. He was always somehow in the middle of the vast majority of whatever issue was plaguing the people around him. He didn’t hear as much as he witnessed school drama. Constantly. He was never really alone, or at least alone for a particularly long time. People always somehow found him regardless of where he hid.
People were always . . . attracted to him, in a way. (No, not like that.) He was always with someone for something: always walking, always talking, always with someone. He somehow knew friend groups without being a part of them. It made gift-giving very easy, but finding a moment to simply be alone was rather hard, even if it was on the weekend.
Next was rather obvious, but had been with him his whole life, so he learned to accept it as normal. Simply put: chaos followed him everywhere. A perpetual flurry of movement, issues, and drama hovering around him like the planets rotating around the sun. His parents may have contributed it to being first-time parents, and his siblings to the general aura that followed the Wattersons wherever they went, and his friends and classmates much of the same, but Gumball started to notice the differences.
Things always happened in a certain way. Not necessarily at the right time and place, but in a way that maximized the potential for other things to happen. It based itself, particularly on luck, but surprisingly, rarely on previous experiences or information. There was a surprising lack of continuity. Information often contradicted itself and layered on top of itself, creating something that looked difficult to understand, only able to be deciphered by the familiarity that came with living in Elmore his whole life. For as much Anais talked about physics and biology, she rarely pointed out how much the residents of Elmore followed neither.
It was a colorful array of things that shouldn’t happen but do: a talking balloon or cactus or toast or potato or ball of clay or robot with enough consciousness to act on human stimuli (most of the time, at least). Everyone was crammed into a school with very few adjustments made for the diverse population that walked through the halls. Everything could be seen as too colorful and dizzying, something coming straight from a storybook or the imagination of someone. Common sense was so strange that it seemed like a subject of its own, and would certainly do better than trying to futilely apply the laws of biology or physics in the setting.
But he never thought of it as strange.
And, to be frank, why would he? What was someone else’s abnormal was his normal, and he was proud of it in a way he never really talked about. Embraced the strangeness of his town and everything that it entailed, even if that strangeness came in the form of a blue cat with a knack for getting into trouble, whether or not it was truly by his hand.
But again, everything as stated could just be something he encountered. Not something to necessarily raise alarms about.
The alarms came when he first saw the Void (or void, he really preferred the capital V).
It pulled him in a way he knew was addicting. Almost paralyzed him. Had him sitting in Mr. Small’s van Janice and wanted to open the door and stare at the static that engulfed the world. Had him trying to listen to the sound and try to figure out what it wanted to say with its existence. All things existed for a reason, and he wanted to try to figure out why the Void existed. What was it trying to say? What was its purpose?
And then they freed Molly, closed the Void, and it was over.
Or at least, he thought so.
For a while afterward, something hovered over his skin and under it: trying to take a dig at him. Wanting to flow through him and under him. Trying to both empower and undermine his existence. He couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t even really explain it.
Because he didn’t know how to explain it, he never tried to. He thought it would go away eventually, that it was just a lingering side effect, that because he was no longer there, it’d fade away to nothing. At one point, he got so confused that he almost asked Darwin—or even Molly—if he felt the same way he did.
And then the Void started to talk to him.
IV
Standing outside of the school, Gumball didn’t know what to think.
There was a flurry of movement: students and teachers and staff talking, conversation bubbling up into announcements which boiled up and spilled over to the main topic: Bobert. Things tipped over and spilled like different shades of watercolor, saturating the scene by bleeding together. The sky stretched on and on, unseeing and barren of clouds. Even the sun didn’t show its face today, which was . . . weird, but nothing to get nervous over.
Next to him, Darwin hovered, somehow acting as a medium between Gumball and all the other students that were talking around and through him. Anais was off, either with her own friends or reading somewhere. Knowing the general flow of things, they’d never finish their argument, and it was doomed to hypotheticals and unanswered questions from the start. Not that he particularly cared, anyway. He knew he was in the right, despite what his sister wanted to believe.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see vibrant red lights spilling over the pavement. There was a shrill sound of a firetruck as people hopped off the truck and ran into the building. As if spurred by their movement, he then could hear the aggravating voice of Miss Simian, threatening detention if they didn’t move back more. He shuffled back while seeing the faint orange glow left behind from Bobert’s malfunction.
He frowned. He knew Bobert wanted an upgrade that allowed him to properly analyze the weather without the flaws of the news channel. There was a possibility that today could lead to him engaging with the robot, or being involved with something that somehow related to the argument he just had with Anais, which he never really finished it in a satisfying manner. Continuity, even as sporadic as it was in Elmore, did happen to come every now and then in short bursts.
He looked again at the firefighters. The last of them had run into the building to do whatever. He didn’t know what protocol they tended to follow. Didn’t care enough to know, actually. Now that he was outside, he wanted to sit on the bench and relish in the procrastination of academic responsibilities. Unlike Anais, who was reading and reviewing her notes, he was going to try to actually have fun.
But then he took a step, and the world suddenly swerved—
It was displacement, the complete shoving and shifting of his thoughts around to bring something new. Everything was desaturated, for a moment. Lost its color and life, people and places melting away and dissolving into nothingness.
Something moved, writhed, and shifted, pushing and prodding at the corners of his mind, popping like fireworks while staying as still as a very big rock. He tried to move his arm but found it going very slowly as if moving through molasses.
What the what?! he thought. He tried to shout it, but it turned out that his body simply wouldn’t do what he wanted. Regardless, he was Gumball Tristopher Watterson, and he didn’t take things lying down.
He took them procrastinating, but because it didn’t apply to the situation, nor did he know if he was in direct danger or not, he could compromise.
There was a wave of pinpricks, making his fur stand on end, his skin prickling with anxiety. A shiver ran up his spine so quickly he could feel his brain rattling. Literally. It smacked against his skull in a way that made him dizzy.
But regardless, he wasn’t scared. Even as another wave of pinpricks rolled over him.
His thoughts scattered like dead leaves in the wind. Letters broke apart from words and rearranged themselves in his mind. He could taste ozone—smell it, even.
The Void pushed itself through his thoughts, grabbing human letters from the English language for communication. It was something that encompassed all possible and real languages, something beyond discoveries past and present, maybe even the future. If the last few sentences sounded oddly wise, then just know that Gumball didn’t figure it out—he only knew it because the Void told him.
Eh—told was a simplified word. It forced him to know, actually—
What’s going on? he thought loudly. It echoed through his head, and it was a miracle that he gathered just enough wit to think that. Around him, the world was dissolved in static and space. He was currently displaced, and it’d be difficult to get back to Elmore unless he went through whatever the Void wanted him to get through.
The Void didn’t answer. It only lingered.
What do you want? he asked again.
It didn’t answer him.
He would’ve huffed if he could. He slowly turned his head and looked around. He really, really could leave if he wanted to. He thought. He could at least try—
The Void surged. Encompassed him, drowned his thoughts and feelings and overwhelmed him and—
It’d never done that. He didn’t have a lot of experience with it, but he knew it didn’t do that. The Void proved to be big and expansive, but it stared back at a person as much as they stared back at it. It was like a reflection, in a way. It stayed stable until it moved, suddenly plucking mistakes and things that weren’t meant to exist from Elmore. It was like an imperfect garbage disposal, in a way. It was also somewhat . . . passive, so to speak. Watching. Never doing unless it was able to. Lazy, so to speak.
He should know. He’s lazy.
“—happen if we don’t hurry. I have to get back.”
He frowned.
He knew that voice.
That was the voice of someone he heard up until recently when he tried to basically convert the school to look like five-fingered, fleshy meat bags. It was like a cult, trying to capture him and Darwin to turn into something. The worst part was, he never got to figure out a reason.
Even worse was, it was a massive improvement for Sussie, and she had to turn back.
He couldn’t see where Rob’s voice was coming from. It sounded like an echo, coming from everywhere, making it near impossible to pinpoint it, even with his hearing.
The Void suddenly grew louder, increasing in crescendo, getting louder and louder, drowning his hearing until—
ItiscomingandapproachingwithincrediblespeedforweorIaminevitableinanaturalway—
The noise was increasing. Rob’s voice was quickly drowned out. He couldn't cover his ears.
—yourtimeinthisuniverseiscoMINGTOANEND—
“—ball? Gumball!”
A fin smacked his back and he coughed, loud and unrestrained. It was as if every atom of his being was rattled, shaken from the inside out like trembling, barren trees during autumn. He didn’t know where the previous comparison came from, it just felt right. Clarity was brought back to the world. The color came next. Then shape.
His coughing slowed down. The feeling started to return to his limbs. “ . . . what?”
Darwin stared at him as if he was a puzzle to figure out. Mouth quirked into a frown, he turned and eyed him, up to down. Everyone was still outside, but from the conversation between Principal Brown, Bobert, and the firemen, it looked like they were getting ready to go back inside soon. His range of sight returned to normal, and fuzzy blobs of color turned into actual people (and non-people).
“Are you okay?” his brother ventured. “You seem out of it. I called you four times.”
He rolled his shoulders. “You just surprised me. I was thinking about something.”
The excuse missed the intended reaction by lightyears. Darwin stared at him, still frowning. “What were you thinking about?”
Gumball scoffed. Tried his best to shake the strange feeling from his limbs. “My brand of genius is too advanced for the world to handle. I’ll even startle poor, innocent Anais.”
And as anticipated, someone was drawn to his orbit, and not a moment too soon. Masami scoffed and rolled her eyes. Or she at least looked like it. It was hard to tell with temperamental clouds. “The only genius you’re capable of is miraculously forgetting an assignment despite being reminded multiple times by Miss Simian, us, and Darwin.”
“I like to think that contributed greatly to my overachiever status.”
Before Masami could retort, Darwin laughed. “You are . . . something of an overachiever. In the right categories.”
Gumball grinned. “See?”
Masami scowled. “You’re both losers.”
Gumball grinned and hoped the static-like feeling in his limbs would disappear soon.
V
“Ten minutes left!”
He couldn’t focus on his pop quiz.
The first question never landed. The words didn’t swim under his vision as much as they fizzled and popped. Whenever he swallowed his spit, he tasted ozone. His limbs were so prone to falling asleep that he sometimes avoided moving. It was probably the most well-behaved he ever was in Miss Simian’s class. He should know—he could feel her eyes on his fur, trying to figure out his angle, probably.
But if he kept from moving too much during the class, then Darwin would corner him and demand he told him what was going on. He already knew that he was suspicious. He usually couldn’t stop moving in her class, complaining that it was boring or stifling to his creative mind. When he blinked he saw static, and sometimes, he felt like he could hear Rob’s voice.
The Void lingered in his mind—he could feel it. It never left this morning, just receded to the corners of his mind. It didn’t try to reach him again, but the fact that it was still here meant something.
His eyes closed again, trying to blink when—
“Time’s up! Turn in your quizzes on my desk!”
What? he thought. Didn’t he just have ten minutes left? He just heard Miss Simian—
You know what? Whatever. Wasn’t like he was going to get to answer the stupid questions anyway. Wasn’t like he was going to get a decent grade on it anyway, either. His mind was everywhere but where it needed to be, the strange emptiness of his mind reflected on the blankness of his paper.
“What? Not even trying, Watterson?” Miss Simian sneered. “Thought that improved behavior could make up for an F? Well then, here’s your answer!” She took out her favorite fat, red marker and wrote a giant zero over the blank paper. “Here’s your grade.”
She probably cackled. Or laughed. Something that nearly made Bobert malfunction again and Alan pop like the balloon he was. Something that had everyone else wincing.
But he couldn’t. His head was kind of hurting, if he was being honest. Something ominous was brewing in his stomach, like storm clouds. His limbs still felt heavy and half-asleep. A deep-seated feeling of wrongness couldn’t have been more obvious. The shouts of concern over Alan were muted whispers to him. The sound of static rose in volume again, almost as if it was whispering to him. Who knew, it could be trying to. Again.
He somehow sat in his chair again. He could feel Darwin’s eyes on him. He could hear static and the blood roaring in his ears, drowning out everything else until all that was left was—
He slammed one hand on his desk and raised the other. “Miss Simian! May I go to the nurse please?”
VI
The rest of the day went something akin to this:
The next ten minutes were spent convincing Miss Simian to go to the nurse for a headache. He honestly expected an outright no, or at least more arguing on his part, but it must have been something with his expression and recent behavior since she let him go mere minutes later. However, because she still very much hated him, she didn’t let Darwin escort him there, instead picking Banana Joe. Not that she could’ve known, but that arrangement was perfect since he didn’t want to face Darwin’s form of interrogation at the moment.
But he did face an odd look or two from the fruit, so it wasn’t exactly what he called a win.
(“Dude, are you okay?” he asked. “You kind of look out of it.”
“Peachy,” he gritted out.
“No really, you’re starting to look how like my mom—”
“Just. Peachy.”)
Upon actually getting there and the conclusion that he didn’t have a fever, he was given an ice pack and a few minutes to sit there with the lights off. At that time, he thought about what he’d tell Darwin. He could say he just had a headache, but that also left lingering questions, questions he didn’t know he had the answer to. But then again, Darwin was also an understanding fish, which probably applied to simply saying a headache and nothing else. The most annoying thing he'd do—ideally—would be showing how concerned he was for his well-being.
It wasn’t like I’m doing a good job of convincing him otherwise, he thought, sinking into the uncomfortable chair. Heck, even Miss Simian let him go to the nurse after minimal argument. And within that argument, he had to convince that he felt sluggish and tired as well. I’m so out of character I’d be fired if I was an actor.
He remained there for a short bit of time before lunch, leaving right before his class was let out to ensure he didn’t run into Darwin. An internal battle between looking more suspicious but putting off an unfavorable conversation against having it now and risking the somewhat suffocating empathy and pity from his brother both compromised into him getting to the cafeteria first and getting his lunch to avoid having the conversation in the hallway. The last thing he wanted was for people to add in their two cents, ugh.
Avoiding confrontation also wasn’t good for his ego, but that was neither here nor there.
Turns out, his I just have a headache excuse worked primarily because Banana Joe overheard him saying it in the nurse’s office and was able to back him up. Darwin was thoroughly convinced but slightly miffed that he was lied to that morning. Gumball shrugged and said something about how he really was thinking, which could be true, depending on if being dragged into the Void itself and wondering what the heck was going on counted as thinking. It was probably a stretch, even for him, but.
He still became at least somewhat of an annoyance after lunch because he had appearances to keep up, but the sluggish, heavy feeling in his limbs remained. The Void still lingered in his mind, and if he largely sat on a bench during recess because his limbs kept falling asleep, then either no one noticed or said anything. Darwin kept trying to shove water down is throat for the remaining school day, and the only reason why he only retorted with two fish-related water jokes would be because he knew he was genuinely concerned for his well-being, given that he could count on a single hand how many times he was ill, or at least in any pain that was enough to leave him, as quoted from Banana Joe, “Out of it.”
Penny smiled at him a few times and asked him to take it easy, and in any other circumstance, he’d melt into a puddle. However, due to the confusing nature of this day, he simply smiled and let himself be kissed on the cheek. Right after she left Darwin shoved so much water down his throat that he himself felt like a fish—just drowning in water instead of living in it.
When the final bell rang, he nearly sagged in his seat with relief. His head still hurt, but it wasn’t bad, and definitely not bad enough to complain about while Darwin could hear him. Everything Miss Simian said went in through one ear and out the other, but that was normal. What wasn’t normal were her eyes on him so many times, trying to wait for something. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t end in a detention.
“Dude, it’s gone already.” He pushed Darwin’s water bottle from his face with a sigh. He didn’t even want to ask where he was getting them from, anyway. It’d probably end in another fish joke from him. Plus, they were sitting on the bus, almost home. Can’t fight every battle—just enough to be considered petty. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be, like, ninety-nine percent water after today, anyway.”
“The way you’re leaning your head against the window says otherwise,” he carefully pointed out.
Well, you try to have the Void try to talk to you without really talking and see how you fair, he thought. Instead, he responded with, “Today was just so boring.”
“Yeah, because you weren’t pulling your usual shenanigans to begin with.” He squinted at the cat. “But I trust you when you say you’re fine.”
He perked up. “Finally. Thank yo—”
“Because I trust that you’re telling me the truth,” he steamrolled. “The foundation of any good, live-long, worthwhile relationship is mutual trust between two or more parties. So yes, I trust that you’re telling the truth that there’s nothing to be concerned about, and in turn, you’ll trust me enough to properly communicate your troubles. As not only your brother but your best friend, I both demand and expect that level of trust from you.”
Gumball was getting the vaguest feeling he was being threatened. Good thing he never really listened to warnings. “Dude,” he started, barely keeping a laugh from escaping. “You’re quoting something.” His eyes suddenly widened. He busted out laughing. “Is that Daisy the Donkey? Have you been watching it with Anais lately?”
“Wha—” he sputtered, but wouldn’t look at Gumball. He laughed harder. That was all he needed to know. He ignored the headache flaring up again, the static trying to take over his limbs again, and forgot about the Void in his head for the time being. Tears were in his eyes as his brother tried to defend his honor to no avail.
“I—can’t—believe—” he started laughing uncontrollably again. He could barely breathe.
“Alright, laugh it up,” he grouched, arms crossed. “But it was important stuff, and it clearly applied here.”
He hugged his stomach and caught his breath. “Daisy the Donkey? Really?”
“It was on!” he defended, “I couldn’t change the channel! Anais was watching it!”
“I hope you know I’m never letting this go.” He elbowed Darwin. “But seriously, I don’t think a talk about trust is unnecessary. It’s just a headache. Really.”
He sighed and uncrossed his arms. “And I trust you.”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. He smirked and barked out another laugh when Darwin turned away in false annoyance.
VII
Gumball really thought he was cheated out of superpowers. Catfished, even.
Superpowers were supposed to be cool, something he could show off and only wait for praise. Someone he could use to save people and look cool while doing it. Something he could become popular and loved and rich by. Sure, the last three weren’t supposed to be the biggest motivators, but it would be great to have them.
But instead.
But instead.
He couldn’t even count this as a superpower. Sure, it most certainly wasn’t normal to have the Void in your head every now and then, or something that shouldn’t be sentient trying to communicate with you every now and then, but that hardly counted as something amazing. It tended to become inconvenient if anything. Even more inconvenient when there was no tangible evidence of it happening. For all he knew, it could have been something totally not cool—like schizophrenia!
Point was, how would he even begin to explain this to anyone he knew? How he sometimes knew things he shouldn’t because sometimes he could look at people and realize their previous actions? How was he supposed to say he just somehow knew things? That he knew Miss Simian was giving out pop quizzes today? That he knew that Bobert wanted an upgrade and it wasn’t going to go right?
That the Void was obviously trying to tell him something today—something that he obviously never witnessed nor was a part of before—but he didn’t know what? That he could tell that Rob was in the Void, but somewhere that was so hard to reach, much less rescue him from? That the Void was getting louder and louder, indicating it was getting more and more invasive in his head, scattering his thoughts and making it harder to move?
That didn’t sound like a superpower at all.
“Gumball.”
Someone was poking his shoulder and he didn’t like it. Turned out, he didn’t like it at all. Would probably try to like, bite whoever it was or something if he didn’t feel so tired. Maybe if he sank further into the bed, then he wouldn’t need to acknowledge it. He shifted his head and started to fall asleep again.
There was a pause. Then—
Someone yanked at his ear.
“Ow—” He sat up immediately, face pulled into a sour expression. The hand let go, but the pain lingered, fresh and white-hot. He opened his eyes to protest when—
Well then.
“What?” he asked. He noticed how this time, he could move. The static was around him as well as in him, the pull in him that often came with being in the Void. He blinked and sighed. “Again?”
“Again?” another voice asked. “I know you’ve been here before, but are you that tired? Not like you have to live here for the foreseeable future.”
He blinked and turned. It was Rob. Against his better judgment, he tackled the seemingly most insignificant detail of the matter first. “You pulled my ear?”
He scowled. “Really? That’s what you’re concerned about? Not being here? Not the concern about whether or not you’ll be able to leave? Not being stuck here with me, your enemy?”
“My ear still hurts, you jerk.”
He scoffed and threw up his hands. “I can’t believe this.” He looked up at the . . . not sky, but it was definitely up higher in the Void. Sorta-sky? Void-sky? “Is this your cosmic definition of a joke?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone up there to hear you.” Or care. Not unless one just so happens to be Gumball’s breed of weird, and have the Void trying to funnel itself through him like a cosplayer trying to wear a too-tight suit. He had to keep himself from shuddering. Not the visual he wanted. “You sound like you’re trying to talk to your imaginary friend.”
“You sound like you want to cease existing, and if that’s your intention, then go right ahead!” Rob shouted in his face, making spittle fly everywhere. Including his face. Ew. He just noticed he was wearing a tin foil hat, too. Now that he wasn’t nursing his ear, he also noticed he was wearing a similar tin foil hat.
“Uh, no thanks.” He got comfortable sitting on the ground. “You tried that before you were probably put here. Like, five-fingered fleshy meat bags? I didn’t want to be a part of a cult, dude.”
His eye twitched. “I’ll have you know, I was trying to save you, which I shouldn’t have done, because none of you guys see it! The world you know is going to—”
Ugh. Another long-winded explanation he wasn’t going to try to listen to. He shut his eyes. He was starting to feel heavy again.
There’s a kick aimed at his shin. “Listen to me!” Rob shouted, exasperated. All it did was irritate Gumball. “No one ever listens! It’s coming!”
“Yeah yeah, something’s coming and you’re the only one who can stop it.” He could most certainly be the hero, ‘cause Gumball didn’t want to be one. Sounded cool until it meant doing stuff not covered by movies and video games, which was pretty much the extent of his experience. Rob didn’t like him, but at least he wasn’t a chronic procrastinator. “Go stop it then.”
Rob looked ready to strangle him.
Gumball raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
Then, the cyclops sighed and slumped his shoulders. His patience was amazing. Phenomenal, even. He should be a teacher. Should totally replace Miss Simian—he’d be much more entertaining, too. “Gumball, tell me what you know about Elmore.”
“Half the people lack common sense.”
“Well, yeah, but—not that kind of stuff! Like, does it seem . . . abnormal to you?”
He deadpanned, “I’ve lived here my whole life. Anything abnormal is normal to me. And cut it with the conspiracy vibe, it just looks weird.”
Rob turned off the flashlight that was intentionally angled below his chin. “You know, I thought you appreciated the dramatics.”
Not now, when his brain felt permanently stuck on a screen that said no signal. He also felt very, very tired right now. At least the Void wasn’t trying to talk to him again. “You’re always dramatic.”
“And you’re always exceptionally frustrating,” he retorted, rubbing his temples. Did he even have them? He seemed to be rocking that abstract look, lately. Not that he necessarily had a choice, but. “This place is called the Void. This is where—”
“All the mistakes in Elmore go. Where the things that aren’t supposed to exist end up,” he finished.
“Good. You at least know something. The Void also acts as a regulation system. It tends to get rid of things that don’t belong. It’s a frustrating filtering system, but it’s a natural part of Elmore.”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s normal. Now, what’s the issue?”
“It’s stopped working, is the issue,” he hissed. “It’s like a gear in a machine suddenly stopping, except this gear was really important for its function. The machine can’t keep going without it.”
“So replace the gear.” Boom! He has been completely nailing these hypothetical conversations today.
“You don’t get it.” Rob looked at the ground. The world started to blur around him. “It didn’t break, it stopped. The Void is completely able to work, it just isn’t. Replacing the gear won’t get the machine to work. The gear isn’t the one broken. The problem is that the machine thinks it’s done its job.” He looked up at Gumball. “The Void is finished with trying to perfect Elmore.”
“So what? We won a beauty pageant or something?”
“Can you be serious for just one moment?!”
“Well I’m sorry,” he spat. “It’s hard to pay attention when my head feels like a radio that’s not getting a good signal and my body like a fried television set dipped in corn syrup!”
Rob blinked. “ . . . what?”
Gumball blinked. He just realized he said that out loud.
Oops.
The cat shook his head. “Nothing. Just ignore—”
“When did it start? A while back? Are you feeling weird now—no, dumb question. Of course, you do. Even weirder today than previously? Trouble focusing? I don’t know what something like this would entail. Of course, I had theories, but—”
Gumball blinked again. He was laying on the ground, the world turning black around the edges. He knew how this worked. The Void was trying to pull him out.
Faintly, he heard Rob say something not appropriate for young audiences. “Of course, you’re going back now. Try to come back to me whenever you can, okay?”
He blinked again. He was leaving.
“—don’t forget to watch out for the N—”
And Rob was gone.
VIII
It was night when Gumball dragged himself from bed with a groan.
He peeled his eyes open and looked at the time. Long story short: too close to midnight. The house was quiet except for snores, and even those snores sounded rather quiet. He dug his hands into his eyes, trying his best to keep from groaning again, but louder. It would be a good summary of how the day went, given the circumstances.
It wasn’t the first time he dreamt of himself in the Void, but it was never spectacular for him; it often made him remember that the Void could invade his mind if it could. And speaking of which, it was still in his head. It had receded even more, quieter than it had ever been today, but it was still there.
Was that what you wanted to tell me? he pondered. Invading his sleep, making him feel so tired it was insane, and giving him minor headaches over a conversation with Rob? He wasn’t stupid, he knew that whatever was going on was big, something that ought to be paid attention to, which was even more noteworthy because no one had noticed anything yet. He’d just prefer it if the Void decided to invade Rob instead of him—he was obviously more well-versed in the whatever-it-could-be going on over him. It was also way too late to start caring about it now.
Next to him, he saw Darwin sleeping in his fishbowl. Looked like no one woke him up for dinner, opting to let him sleep. He didn’t know why—they woke him up from naps before for lesser things.
Darwin, he realized. He recalled getting off the bus and going home. He then trudged up the stairs and sat in bed. He didn’t fall asleep immediately, he remembered trying to play a handheld game and lost for like, the nth time. He tried to reload it and it was taking a while, so he relaxed into the bed and closed his eyes for what was supposed to be for a second.
Based on the covers that someone obviously put on him, and the handheld game on the desk next to the computer, that wasn’t what happened. At all. And the worst part? He still felt kind of tired. Not as tired, but enough to want to crawl back into bed again. So do you know what he did?
He crawled back into bed.
But he didn’t fall asleep.
How could he? Even he could admit that something was going on, something that could potentially—emphasis on the word potentially —become dangerous. Rob obviously said that the Void was . . . finished, so to speak. He couldn’t exactly believe that, given that it was still obviously there. He may believe that it was finished doing its job, but not necessarily finished with Elmore in general. It was obviously done with something, and it may have been trying to communicate with what it finished. This morning was so confusing he didn’t want to try to figure out that mystery.
Well if it’s done, he thought, then it would be a good thing. No more people and things can go missing with people suspiciously going missing.
Yeah—yeah, it would be a good thing. Rob was just overreacting, as per usual.
Gumball sank into his bed and shut his eyes.
It’ll all be over in the morning.
IX
That next morning, Gumball looked at the sky, it being bleak and gray and lifeless, and the stone in his stomach begged otherwise.