Chapter Text

Once, not long after all this started -- alright, it's never long, because "time" only happens in the same twenty two minutes anymore; and alright, technically this had started some nine million loops ago, after the "first time" your sun went supernova but before the Nomai probe had fired in just the correct direction to find the Eye of the Universe, in turn triggering some other piece of alien technology to beam your own memories back at you; but not many loops after it officially started for you, specifically -- you tried to escape your exploding sun.

You had no idea how far you should go. You had no idea what was happening back then; all you knew was that the sun blew up. And then it blew up again! Talk about inconsiderate. But for fear of agonizing stellar fire consuming your body a third time, you rushed into your spaceship, launched into space, turned to face the sun just so you could be sure you wouldn't somehow fly into it, and flew backwards.

For twenty two minutes you did this.

For twenty two minutes, knuckles going white as you gripped the controls harder than you ever had during training, you maintained maximum thrust until your village; your home planet; your sun; your entire solar system was so far away you could no longer see it even through your signalscope.

For twenty two minutes your only companions were the sounds of your own breathing, your thundering heartbeat, and the two thrusters accelerating you ever onward, never faltering once. (It was practically a miracle that something made by Slate could survive that long without overheating, exploding, or overheating and then exploding.)

For twenty two minutes you watched as, one by one, every single star in the sky winked out. Some exploded; some simply shrunk into themselves and vanished. This was the first time you realized it wasn't just your sun that was exploding, and the first time you truly appreciated the fact that not every star had to explode. It felt unfair that yours did.

For twenty two minutes you didn't stop until, without warning, your memories were unceremoniously sucked from your head once again and spit back at you twenty two minutes earlier.

For the you that got those memories, the escape attempt ended there.

But there was another you. There was the you that stayed behind after "you" looped. Only your memories are sent back in time, after all. Your body didn't come along for the ride, and the Nomai were not so cruel as to scoop out your entire consciousness and leave a lifeless body to crumple up into a heap behind you. (Or, as far as time travel goes, in front of you.)

But then again... maybe the kinder thing would have been to kill you.

When the loop concluded, you completely missed it. The slight tingle of an ancient alien technology doing something you had yet to even begin to understand barely registered in the face of thinking, for twenty two minutes straight, "do not let up until the fuel tanks are completely empty." Your only real indication it happened was a sharp bleep! from the ship computer as the lock-on system -- which you had set to the sun, to track your progress -- suddenly disabled itself. Somewhere just north of 40,000 kilometers away, your sun exploded so violently that your ship could no longer consider it a single astral body to lock onto. The resulting supernova was at the same time more terrifying than it had ever been, and completely underwhelming. The silence of it made it seem unreal, and you almost thought that it must have been another star in the sky; but no. This supernova was too big, too near to be anything else. And it was the exact shade of blue that had already been burned into your retinas (and the rest of your body) twice before.

You only let up on the thrusters when they abruptly gave out about ten minutes later, making a horrible choking sound that, belatedly, you realized was not them exploding and rupturing the cabin. It took several seconds of teeth-gritting face-scrunching desperately-squeezing-your-eyes-shut before you realized the obvious: they had simply -- finally -- run out of fuel. Opening your eyes confirmed this bold hypothesis: the needle on the fuel gauge was deeper in the red than any responsible pilot (read: any non-Hearthian) would put it; at the bottom-right corner of the gauge a small red light blinked accusingly at you; and in case these were insufficient, the ship's dashboard helpfully read, "SHIP FUEL DEPLETED."

That was when you first understood how alone you were. The thrusters burning at either side of you -- which had dutifully streamed incandescent orange trails before the cockpit -- had left big blurry spots in your vision as a parting gift. And now their deafening roar, once so frightening as to be a legitimate obstacle in your training, was so thoroughly absent that your ears rang in sympathy, aching for their return.

Your body went limp in the pilot's chair as the constant tension of trying to escape a horrible death ceased animating you all at once. It was a wonder you even had the strength to breathe. You didn't know how long you stayed in that chair, silently shuddering in what seemed like the only hospitable place left in the universe. You didn't know how long you cried when it all caught up to you -- though you thought it impressive that anything could catch up to you, considering you were barreling through space at who-knows-how-many thousands of meters per second. All you knew was that you wished you had brought someone -- anyone -- along with you. And you cursed yourself for wishing such cruelty upon another being.

You wrestled with that thought for a while. Many variations spiraled and branched off from it, much like the Nomai language that you and Hal had only just finished a translator for. You wished you had anyone to talk to. You wished you had anyone to hug; to kiss; to cherish. You wished you had been selfish enough to be stupidly heroic and grab someone by the wrist, telling them there was no time and they had to come with you. You wished you had thought of your own survival long enough to think of anyone else's. You wished you could convince yourself that it would have been merciful to subject anyone to the cold, enduring reality of everyone and everything dying, instead of the instant mercy of being swallowed by an exploding star. You wished you could stop hiccuping as you cried.

Eventually, after what must have been hours, your hunger for companionship gave way to plain hunger, and some miserable part of you decided with conviction that it wanted to be a little less miserable. Standing was an ordeal all its own, and for a moment you considered throwing the gravity crystal into space just so your twanging muscles could rest in earnest. But you were not half so bold or dramatic as that. You merely grabbed an open can of marshmallows and salted them with tears as you ate.

It depressed you further when you realized you had no way to roast them. That is, no way that did not involve intentionally lighting a campfire inside your ship, which you had been instructed not to do more than a dozen times. But that was advice given to a cadet that was expected to stay within their solar system, on the assumption that the solar system would stay unexploded. What difference did it make now, at the end of the universe?

You ran that thought through your head more than a hundred times without ever following through on it. Somehow you just couldn't convince yourself it was worth the risk of burning to death, or dying of smoke inhalation, or slowly freezing in the vacuum of space as you fled a flaming cockpit. (Or, more likely, quickly asphyxiating once your spacesuit's oxygen depleted.)

And it struck you that despite your inherent recklessness, the kind that was practically a requirement for being a Hearthian, you genuinely couldn't do it. Even if every other part of you would have allowed it, you could not actively choose to endanger yourself. Not here, not now, not in this tiny flammable box surrounded by death on all sides. It wasn't even that you had hope in you; not really. Sure, you could have hoped for a benevolent spacefaring alien species to (still) exist, to miraculously find you, to choose to rescue you, and to unconditionally give you everything you needed to live out the rest of your natural life. But you were sorely lacking in that kind of optimism.

All you had instead was fear.

You had already "survived" dying twice before, yes, but it was hardly pleasant. And as far as you were aware, whatever had originally sent you back in time wouldn't work now that you were... call it a bajillion kilometers away. All you knew was that you had yet to wake up under the stars again, like you had the last two times the sun exploded -- and that terrified you. Death had always been a common flirtation for any Hearthian, but you were a hardy species! Some of you had even survived getting launched into orbit by a geyser! Death had always been a constant companion that you shared stories and jokes with. Death had never been so pervasive, so absolute, as a sky devoid of stars. Devoid of anything. Every second you spent looking out of the cockpit into that infinite, inky void was another reason that you could not bear the idea of no longer existing. (Eventually, you could not bear the view, and drew shut the curtain behind the pilot's seat. You then spent nearly half an hour taping the sides of the curtain to the walls, only to look down and remember the view through the hatch. You gave up after that.)

And yet, as multiple bouts of hyperventilation would come to attest, you had little choice in the matter.

Your supplies would run out eventually. You would die of starvation, or dehydration, or oxygen deprivation, or -- if you were really lucky -- you would die of smashing into something so fast that you would blissfully and instantly scatter in an uncountable number of pieces. That scenario became a favorite of yours, by the end. It was a shame it never happened, if only for the suffering it would have spared.

And it was a shame, you thought quite a lot, that you were too much of a coward to take your own life. You were vividly aware of how easy it would be, of course. All you had to do was go for a spacewalk without a spacesuit. It would be the easiest thing in the universe. (Although you did not know it, the you that had already received your memories would prove how easy it was by doing it on the very next loop. To them, it was a simple, laughable accident, immediately rectified by the start of the next loop. They could not know how much more suffering it brought you. You could not know how much easier it was to handle while confidently looping through time.)

In the end, it was the coldness that took you. You had spent some time calculating how long your water and oxygen would last, as they were the most pressing concerns, but had neglected to consider your fuelless vessel's natural dissipation of heat until you were shivering. You knew that any campfire you could build would smoke you out far sooner than it could extend your lifespan, and by the time you remembered your emergency tree seeds, thinking of planting them on the roof of your own spaceship so you could build the fire there, it was already too late. Even if the trees could grow without a single star in the sky to photosynthesize from, they would never grow in time. So you huddled next to the dead reactor until your very last breath.

You died alone and unremarkable in a vast universe that died with you, as it had so many times, and would do many times again. The you that collapsed the infinite possibilities of the Eye of the Universe never remembered you.

But I remember you.

Chapter Text

It was a good number of loops before you unraveled the mysteries of the Quantum Moon. You had so much fun on the way there.

You were still dying with nearly every loop, and that took its toll, but you only ever received the memories of pain, rather than the pain itself. You never once considered that you had left any part of yourself behind on that third loop. I don't blame you, by the way. You were young and inexperienced, but even more than that you had the only key in existence that could unlock the secrets of the Nomai. (Actually, I suppose it wasn't the only key, per se. You later found evidence that other Nomai clans still lived on, ultimately congregating elsewhere in the universe. Gloaming Galaxy, wasn't it? But that's neither here nor there; you had the only key within your star system -- the only key present when the time loop started -- and it was one that you personally built in collaboration with your best friend.) So of course you were over the moon thinking about how this time loop was basically an explorer's cheat code.

It was a damn good cheat code, too. Before the time loop, you had to worry about all the perils of your solar system in earnest, and without it you might never have found the Eye.

Okay, strictly speaking, you couldn't have found the Eye; not to mention didn't. If everything ended with the first supernova, all you would have accomplished was landing on the Attlerock, talking to Esker, marveling at the other travelers' instruments through your signalscope, and exploring the Nomai ruins on the south pole. (Something you obliviously did 9,318,054 times before you started receiving your memories through the Ash Twin Project, by the way.) But more generally, if there was no time loop or exploding sun... let's be honest here, you probably would have died a stupid and meaningless death.

Do you remember how many times you were crushed by rising sand? Or eaten by an anglerfish? Or had an island drop on your head, courtesy of an errant tornado? This isn't even a comment on your recklessness; the Outer Wilds are just plain lethal. (All taken together, is it any wonder that every other traveler happened to take a music break at the same time? Consider how often you might have stopped for a breather if you didn't wake up fully rested and in one piece every time you died.)

But let's stretch plausibility to its limits here: maybe -- maybe -- if you were careful and really took your time exploring your solar system, which I'll grant you would have been easier without the ever-present threat of solar annihilation -- then MAYBE you would have found the remnants of an unused Ash Twin Project, and the Nomai Vessel, and even combined the two to make a functioning Nomai vessel, all without ever dying to so much as your autopilot accidentally flinging you into the sun -- and then what? Without the sun exploding, the ATP would never order the Giant's Deep cannon to fire; the Nomai probe would never find the Eye of the Universe; and you would never learn its coordinates. Not realistically, anyway, and certainly not within your lifetime.

All this is to say... I hope you appreciate not just what your own deaths enabled in you, but also what the deaths of all the Nomai who came before enabled, too. It was not just their technology that allowed you to reach the Eye.

It was also their absence.

You were so proud when you first landed on the Quantum Moon. You had every right to be. Though all three quantum rules had their associated challenges, it was a true feat of intellect and determination to pass the Nomai trials of quantum imaging. When you blasted off from the tower and saw the Quantum Moon in orbit around Giant's Deep, mere meters away, it felt like fate. You knew at once you had to land there, if only to be the first Hearthian to do it.

You held your breath as you came in close, staring holes into the Little Scout's image on your visor. It felt somehow indecent to finally witness what was beneath that cloud layer, a visceral peek behind the quantum curtain. It felt miraculous to exit your ship and stand -- really stand -- on the Quantum Moon. Your anticipation and cosmic awe were so electric that you feared the Moon would defy its own rules and disappear from under your feet if you blinked. But when you finally got your bearings, no longer gaping at the turbulent clouds above and the mirrored landscape of Giant's Deep below, you realized you had parked directly on top of a dead Nomai.

That was embarrassing. Not that it was your fault, as landing on the Quantum Moon's south pole was apparently some universal constant, but still.

You had at least managed not to crush it under any landing gear, which would have been downright mortifying. As it stood, when you considered the pros and cons of trying to reposition your ship, you decided (with minimal guilt) that it was not worth the risk of inadvertently disturbing the corpse (e.g. accidentally incinerating it with a thruster). Still, what a sight to realize had been right beside you as you took in your first moments on the Quantum Moon! You politely pretended not to notice that it would change positions whenever you looked away. (It was not, after all, the first quantum skeleton you had encountered.)

Not long afterward you found Solanum's shuttle, barely resisting the temptation to play with its controls, and ruminated on the recording she had left behind.

There was an appreciable trepidation to it, or at least it felt that way. It was hard for you to imagine landing on such a marvel of an astral body for the first time, only to immediately pause at the door to record your thoughts. What an injustice it must have seemed, for such a curious and introspective species to be denied their holy grail by pure happenstance and bad luck; and again for their work to be picked up only by the very newest astronaut of the very newest species in the universe. (And yet, what an incredible honor to carry their torch the final distance. You have every right to be proud.)

Your curiosity was piqued when you discovered the wandering shrine, which was at once startling to suddenly find looming over your shoulder and an awe-inspiring piece of Nomai architecture. You initially had some trouble navigating to the north pole, as there was always some obstacle or another separating the two poles, but Giant's Deep proved to be your best friend in this regard: from its version of the Quantum Moon you could walk right up to the imitation of the giant cyclone on the north pole, spin yourself dizzy until the shrine appeared nearby, and walk the rest of the way across Timber Hearth's version of the Moon. Then it was just a matter of clicking your flashlight on and off inside the shrine until you had reached the Moon's sixth location. (As an aside, that was a little silly of you. I understand you feared what would happen if you blinked outside the shrine -- the Nomai must have built the shrine for a reason, after all, perhaps to avoid quantum entangling anyone into a quantum cliff face -- but there was no harm in blinking inside the shrine. On the other hand, I suppose I can't blame you for being too excited to remember your eyelids sooner than your flashlight.)

I still think about the reflection of your face, just visible in your helmet's visor, when you stepped onto the true state of the Quantum Moon for the first time. Your expression was one of unparalleled astonishment. And for good reason! Much like every Nomai pilgrim who had traveled here before you, you were now closer than you had ever been to the Eye of the Universe.

You had some time to let that sink in as you traveled south, and your sense of wonder grew alongside your fear. You were perhaps more thankful for the time loop in this moment than any other, knowing on a primal level that you could not predict what would happen here. If worse came to worst... at least you had a safety net.

And yet, some awful part of your mind told you, if this Moon was capable of bending space to its whims, why assume time was beyond its reach? The thought that you might forget what you did here, or that your journey had ended the moment you landed, was as uncomfortable as it was unshakable. Still, you pressed on.

And then you met Solanum.

You later regretted the way you gaped at her, even though she was likely too preoccupied with looking up at the Moon's reflection of the Eye to notice. (Never mind the fact you had a space helmet hiding your face.) But you could not help it: though you had seen several old Nomai spacesuits in your travels, you had never once seen one standing and moving!

For a split second, you feared that the dead Nomai you landed on had come to life, seeking revenge. But that was manifestly absurd: for one thing, the Nomai in front of you had a spacesuit in much better condition. For another, she stood with a quiet contemplation that, combined with the staff she held, seemed almost regal. Her movements were nothing like the decrepit shambling of an undead monstrosity.

When you approached, she soon noticed you, and for a time not a single word passed between the two of you. What could you say? What was anyone supposed to say, the first time they met someone of an entirely different species? After nearly an entire minute of staring, the best you could manage was a weak, "Who are you?"

Solanum, apparently intrigued by this question, acted with such fluidity that you could swear she had rehearsed this moment: she tapped her staff on a nearby outcrop of quantum rock, an act which simultaneously imprinted several pictograms onto it and neatly carved out each one.

The resulting conversation, if it could be called such, was one for the ages. Though she could not understand you, you learned her name; that her species once traveled the stars; that you were of a similar age! (In a manner of speaking. She mentioned arriving here was a coming-of-age ritual -- but she had also apparently survived on the Quantum Moon past the extinction of her clan. So... maybe a bit older than you.) Most significantly, you learned just how deeply the Nomai were fascinated by the implications of the Eye, and for good reason. "The Eye represents extreme changeability," she said. And she asked the question you had yet to even consider: "What would happen if a conscious observer were to enter the Eye?"

You didn't know how to respond to that -- and had by now exhausted your conversation topics -- so you merely sat down, goggle-eyed, until the weight of thinking about it forced you onto your back. This put you in a perfect position to stare up at the Quantum Moon's reflection of the Eye, which, arguably, was not helpful -- especially for the pit of fear it opened in your stomach, feeling as though at any moment gravity would reverse and you would fall into it. If Solanum understood your tension, she did not show it, instead merely gazing up into the swirling clouds alongside you.

It was around this time that you heard music, and I cannot overstate the significance of this. You had witnessed the death of your star more than two dozen times now, and despite originally being terrified out of your mind (as any sane creature would be!) you had learned to recognize the moments leading up to its destruction as... music. I don't mean to inflate your ego, but I will always think it incredible that, out of all the species I can remember, yours was the first to interpret its own destruction as a song. As though you truly had a song in your heart, and it sang with every tragedy.

In fact, though you might not have realized it, it was a song you heard even before you recognized what it meant. Every Hearthian did. Among them, only one other Hearthian understood it, being the only other one to remember hearing it more than once. I cannot speak for Gabbro, but I thought the song was beautiful, in its own way. Charming, even. Nothing frightening; merely the prelude for what came next.

And you heard it despite the vast distance between the Eye and your sun. I may never understand it. I know more about you than you know about yourself, and still I may never understand it. But you heard it.

Its conclusion was quickly followed by the end of the loop, something you met with closed eyes. Your memories were a cocktail of emotions, filled with both the answers you gained here and the bountiful new questions. On the next loop, they would fuel a renewed spirit, one that had no intention of resting before the secrets of the Eye were revealed in full.

But when you opened your eyes, you were not met with a sky full of stars.

You were still in your spacesuit, draped increasingly uncomfortably over your own jetpack, staring up at what, on first glance, you had instantly thought to yourself was a "cosmic butthole." (Sorry if that's an embarrassing memory, by the way. For what it's worth, I thought it was funny.)

Slowly, you got to your feet. You looked around, unsure of yourself. Unsure of what to make of your continued existence. Unhelpful thoughts scattered in your mind: Maybe the Quantum Moon really had affected the time loop? Maybe time passed differently here? Maybe you really were trapped.

It did not escape you that Solanum had also theorized her journey was at an end -- in addition to believing she was "not entirely alive." Your pulse quickened.

Soon, you had run the gauntlet all the way back to the north pole, willing the shrine to return as you played peekaboo with the clearing it once occupied. The absurdity of your dance was lost on you as you sought your quantum solace.

Eventually, the shrine returned, and every second it took for the door to close behind you felt longer than the death of the universe. But your flashlight could illuminate no salvation. No matter how many times you clicked it, you remained where you were.

To give credit where it's due, you handled yourself much better than you had on the third loop. You were braver now, more experienced, more comfortable with facing oblivion. Your breathing was labored, but you did not hyperventilate. Your head swam, but you did not panic. You merely slumped against the wall of the shrine, head buzzing in the darkness.

In time, you tore off your space helmet, feeling too stifled by its presence and fully prepared for the consequences. To your mild surprise, you realized the atmosphere on the Quantum Moon was breathable. The signs were there: your oxygen had not depleted while you explored, even as you paid little attention to it. But somehow it was not welcome information.

Slowly, you picked yourself up, physically if not mentally, and left the shrine for the south pole once more. Your journey was plodding and uneventful, dragged down by the weight of your tired, weary thoughts -- until something occurred to you. One last-ditch effort. Something you had thought about when you first met Solanum, something quickly lost as you were invited to probe her for information. Soon, you were jogging, and then broke out into a run. It was worth a try.

When you broke into the clearing, you did not spare a glance toward Solanum. (Though rest assured she watched you with interest.) You merely leaped, activated your jetpack, and flew straight into the Moon's imitation Eye.

You did not have any particular expectations in that moment. In fact, as you flew first on the power of your thrusters, and then on the power of the whirlwind which greedily pulled you into the sky, you had nothing other than an explorer's pure exhilaration coursing through your veins. Journeying into the unknown was what every member of Outer Wilds Ventures was meant to do, and you felt it more strongly in this moment than you had at almost any other.

It was unspeakably disappointing that, on the other side of the fog which enveloped you, you merely found the clearing you had just left. You were well-trained enough to land on your feet, despite the disorienting change in direction, and did so. Solanum politely clapped. After a moment, you once again fell into a sitting position; only this time you stayed sitting upright. You had had enough staring into the sky.

Your mind still swam, but your thoughts felt increasingly dull. What else could you do? You assumed the loop was still functioning -- it had worked for this long, after all -- but then again, you couldn't be sure. You barely understood it to begin with, and you understood the Quantum Moon even less. For all you knew, it really had interfered somehow. If it had, you were sunk; you might as well not bother getting up from where you sat. And if it hadn't... what could you do? The thought of ending your own life was not especially alluring -- not by any of the methods that you had access to.

Incidentally, on the subject of contemplating your own mortality, around a dozen loops into your journey you managed to outrun your sun as it went supernova. I'm sure you remember the thrill of climbing into your ship just as it collapsed, and racing the sun itself, laughing as you sped away backwards and daring the supernova to catch up. You were surprised to find that, while the stellar radiation might have severely reduced your lifespan, you fully managed to escape the blast radius before the loop ended.

The you that stayed behind, after the fireworks were gone, fared much better than your original escape attempt. You were more confident, and had a better grasp on the time loop preserving you. When you did not promptly wake up under the stars again, you tapped your fingers on the dashboard for a few moments, and shrugged. It was all too easy to throw your helmet aside, pop a marshmallow into your mouth for the road, and smile serenely as the empty vacuum of space took your breath away.

Here, though... you had already taken off your helmet. That was the easy way. The fast way. The second fastest after letting the sun eat you. With both of those options off the table, the quickest deaths you could imagine were to either somehow choke yourself, or maybe melt your head under your jetpack. Neither appealed.

Solanum surprised you, some minutes later, when she also removed her helmet. You had been looking at the marbled quantum rock underfoot, and only noticed her decision when the helmet was gently set on the ground with a soft clunk.

You looked up at her, instantly reminded that Nomai were covered in fur. Her neck seemed longer than yours, too, and you briefly regretted not looking up sooner, if only to know how she had fit her antlers in her helmet. By the way she looked around, seeming to taste the air, this was the first time she had thought to try this. Having suffered no obvious ill effects, she looked at you with a smile, though this quickly faded, replaced by a more contemplative expression. She tapped her staff on the wall beside her, and you instinctively pulled out your translator before you could think to remain aloof and brooding. "There is sadness in your eyes, friend. What troubles you?"

The two of you shared a look, her concern meeting your exhaustion, and at once you both realized you had little in the way of an actionable response. Still, you did your best: you grabbed the stones depicting yourself and the Quantum Moon, and showed them to Solanum. This seemed to puzzle her, but after a moment, she replied: "You are dissatisfied with the Quantum Moon?" You nodded. She tilted her head. "Does that mean 'no'?" You frowned and shook your head. "Is my name Solanum?" This confused you, but you dutifully nodded. Solanum beamed. "Excellent! Pardon the unusual questions. I now understand 'yes' and 'no' in your body language. This is actually quite exciting!"

Despite yourself, her enthusiasm was infectious, and brought a small smile to your lips. She continued: "So you are dissatisfied. If I may hazard a guess... do you wish to leave?" Gratefully, you nodded. "And you find yourself unable to leave?" You nodded again. Solanum pondered this, her third eye apparently wandering in thought as the other two focused on her staff, where she typed. "I have not attempted to leave, myself. I confess I have been... afraid to try. Though, having met you, I do not regret my decision." You tried to smile at this, but it came out more bitter than you intended. Solanum seemed to sense this, because she asked, "Could I burden you with endeavoring to explain why you cannot leave? Despite our language barrier, the attempt may be more fruitful than further questioning."

For a while you didn't move, unsure of where to begin. Even if Solanum could create other pictograms for you, how would you convey the need? How could you ask, without words, for such pictures as "the sun exploding" or "a time loop"? It seemed hopeless. And yet, as you considered the problem, your mind treacherously found purchase in one avenue of thought. You wished it hadn't done that; it would have been easier to sit and mope if it hadn't. Now you felt an obligation to try.

With glum purpose, you found the stone depicting the Eye of the Universe, and set it firmly in the middle of the clearing. You took the Quantum Moon stone, showed it to Solanum, and then moved it in a rough orbit around the Eye of the Universe. To really drive the point home, you looked at Solanum and nodded. She seemed to grasp this much, and nodded in return. Then you moved the Quantum Moon to a different point on the ground, as far from the Eye as you dared. You looked at Solanum and shook your head. You repeated this with several locations, all of them arbitrary, if only because you had no stones for any of the planets in your solar system. Still, after the third repetition, Solanum's face lit up, and she began typing a reply. "You cannot leave because the Quantum Moon cannot leave?"

You nodded, and for no other reason than because it felt right, bowed theatrically, your performance concluded. I cannot verify whether the noise Solanum made was a laugh, but she did applaud.

"Well," she said, once you had finished settling back onto the ground, "I suppose we have no alternative but to enjoy each other's company."

You shrugged at that, initially. The suggestion was kind, but you felt drained. You expected, at best, to answer another handful of yes-or-no questions before... expiring, somehow. Probably thirst, possibly running out of oxygen. You could not anticipate how long you would remain there.

It is difficult to estimate just how long you did spend there, because time itself becomes a kind of uncertainty on the Quantum Moon -- especially in orbit around the Eye. It may have been mere minutes. It may have been centuries. It makes little difference.

In time, if such a word applies, the two of you gradually learned to understand one another. Solanum taught you to communicate with her staff, as best she was able, and you offered her your translator, which she patiently employed to create a mental dictionary from her own writing. You taught each other many things about your respective cultures, often caught up in the wonder of a firsthand account of the Nomai, and often getting a wheezing laughter when you shared Hearthian stories. She assured you it was laughter, anyway, adding that it was not mean-spirited. I believe her; if anything, she was impressed by the Hearthians' collective tenacity and ingenuity. (And besides, even you had to admit the story of Feldspar's first """spaceflight""" was pretty funny.)

In the end, though, what happened between the two of you is... ambiguous. I don't merely mean in a social context, either; the influence of the Quantum Moon, and perhaps more significantly the Eye of the Universe, renders your timeline into an increasingly incomprehensible mess. The kind of mess that results in isolated, disconnected memories, some fitting together like jigsaw pieces, others seemingly spawned from the aether. These memories, as "time" goes on, become so disjointed that they are more akin to a fine mist of watercolors than any meaningful, cohesive experience. It's as though your very being naturally dilutes and dissipates with excess time spent in a quantum environment. (This may be more true than I'd like to admit.) In short, there is no single "you" that met Solanum any more than there is a single "you" experiencing a time loop -- only here the effect is ever more profound.

There are many memories, for instance, of you and Solanum sitting in such deep and uninterrupted silence it would seem you had never bothered speaking to one another. Simultaneously, other memories show you growing companionable, even affectionate. Most contradictory of all, and most inexplicably, are the memories of one or both of you sporting some injury or another. In one such memory, you had apparently lost only your bottom left eye; in a different memory, only your bottom right. The context of these moments, if ever it existed past the end of meaningful chronology, is lost to me.

Still, for what it's worth, you and Solanum were very much inclined to become great friends -- if not more, judging by some of your more intimate moments. There may be no definitive canon for your experiences on the Quantum Moon, but if there are any meaningful commonalities, they point to a moving and peaceful coexistence, albeit one shared with no one else.

Frankly, I think it's a shame these memories never made it into the loop. They were ultimately unnecessary in your quest for the Eye, perhaps, but then the same could be said of any connection formed between friends and family. Surely such a relationship deserves better than to be forgotten, discarded merely because an ancient technology never passed it on?

You are free to disagree. It is, after all, your choice how you reflect upon your past selves, and what pieces of them you wish to bring with you into that final frontier.

I only ask that you give them their due consideration.

Chapter Text

These next memories are a bit... difficult. And not just for the reasons you might expect.

Honestly, I would probably be doing the next universe a favor if I didn't bother recounting this, but it's too late now for regrets. Besides, we both know that you live and die by your curiosity. (Curiosity killed the cat, but a time loop brought it back.)

Do you remember the High Energy Lab? My heart still races when I think about it. (Do I have a heart? Never mind.) I'd bet marshmallows to donuts yours does too. That was the first time it all clicked, wasn't it? Obviously, seeing your own memories replaying in front of the Nomai statue was a big hint, but it was also easy to forget. Y'know, with the sun exploding all the time. Anyone would be a bit frazzled dealing with that.

But when you saw "22 minutes" written in the lab, even though it was the tiniest mote of information, it was still the straw that broke the... no, wait, you wouldn't know what that is. (I didn't used to either.) Okay, different metaphor: it was the last wave against a rickety dam, and the dam burst. In the resulting torrent of ideas flooding your brain, suddenly you could see the shape of the mystery that you had slowly been piecing together. Even more than that, you had a golden opportunity to see the principle powering the time loop firsthand. Granted, you had already been experiencing the time loop firsthand, but now you could understand the how, and not just the what.

Do you remember what you did? You put a black hole core in the right slot, and a white hole core in the left slot, and then you fired your scout toward the black hole. And you saw, with your own four eyes, two scouts in front of you at the same time, because somehow the universe allowed it to exit the white hole before it entered the black hole. It was only for a moment, maybe a second and a half at the longest, but you could see time being bent. What a marvel it was! Anyone from Outer Wilds Ventures would have loved to see it, and you considered whether it was worth convincing any of them to come with you -- even if they would forget by the next loop -- just so you could see the look on their face. You almost did, too. But something happened.

Or, more precisely, something very emphatically did not happen.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? I can see it in your eyes. You could never forget it: that tidal wave of disgust, of utter revulsion; that overpowering, visceral feeling of

𝔻𝔼𝕊𝕀𝕊𝕋

that completely knocked you off your feet and left you flailing and scrabbling on the ground, so desperate were you to escape by any means possible. The way you tripped over yourself and fired your jetpack at full tilt, just to exit the building, it was as though a gravity well had formed at the door. Before long you were rocketing away in your ship, and you didn't stop screaming until you had entirely left the solar system. You looked like you were going to vomit. You looked like you wouldn't stop vomiting before the next supernova. You were panting, sweating, and more than anything, horribly confused.

If you hadn't reacted that strongly, I wouldn't be sure these next memories were real, but it is apparently a universal edict that every crime leaves behind evidence. And buddy? You didn't just commit any crime. You committed the biggest crime. You broke one of the fundamental laws of the universe.

Except, of course, you didn't. You felt the universe recoil and fold in on itself, "acting" in the only way I have ever known it to behave: with an unerring sense of self-preservation. You can tell it took your status as a Hearthian seriously, too.

After all, you only tried this twice.

It was such an innocent thought to think. (It wasn't.) How bad could it really be? (Very.) What's the worst that could happen? (The absolute worst.) You just had to know. (You really did.)

At your heart, even if you've never been as studious as Chert or as cautious as Riebeck, you've always been a scientist. You don't need glasses and a lab coat; only a passion for learning and, in particular, for doing something new and carefully watching what happens. Of course, they say the difference between science and screwing around is whether you write down the results. (Who says that? Don't worry about it.) So even if you never felt like a scientist before you flew that ship, you certainly became one once you started recording everything in your ship's log -- and you can thank the stars that even in their ignorance of its intended purpose, Slate built your ship's computer with a piece of the Nomai statue. Do you remember when you first learned that? Hal told you. You were so grateful for not having to rewrite all your discoveries every loop that you immediately ran back to the campsite and kissed Slate on the mouth. (Remind me, did you use tongue? ...Only joking! No need to look at me like that.)

So I get it. You were curious. When you saw your Little Scout pop out of the white hole before it entered the black hole, you were powerless to defy that little voice in the back of your head that said, "what would happen if you removed one of the cores while there were still two scouts?"

It was a stupid idea. You knew it was stupid even before you tried it. But you had all the guts and impulsiveness of a true Hearthian, consequences be damned! Feldspar would have been proud. (That's not necessarily a good thing.) And before even the universe itself knew what you were up to, you did it:

You destroyed the fabric of spacetime.

That was a massive boner. (What? Boner means mistake. What did you think it meant? No, don't answer that.)

The first impressive feat of you doing this was that, despite doing it -- despite it actually, in fact, happening -- you didn't permanently obliterate all of everything forever.

You probably would have if this was one of the early universes -- the kind that hadn't fully gotten the hang of everything yet. And I mean that literally: being and handling everything is the universe's whole job, after all. But luckily for all involved, the damage you caused was limited to... let's call it "one" of an infinite number of parallel timelines. That's not exactly accurate, because metachronology can get pretty hairy, but it should suffice for your understanding. (Believe me; I barely understand it myself. I might not actually understand it at all. It's hard to explain -- and it's hard to explain why it's hard to explain. Just trust me.)

The second, and arguably more impressive feat, was that you didn't die right away. You might not have ever died; though it's probably more helpful to assume you did. (More sane.)

It's... hard to really capture what happened to you in there. And "in there" is such a fundamentally inaccurate description of where you, for lack of a better word, "were," that it somehow wraps back around to being viable. But, for the sake of understanding, try to imagine it like this: when you tore the fabric of spacetime a new one, it didn't instantly shatter everything everywhere. (If it had, you and I wouldn't be here.) It was more of a ripple than a shatter -- although it was both -- but that ripple had an observable speed, and much like a wildfire or a tumor, it could be stopped by cutting it off before it spread any further.

To be honest, I don't really know how, and I probably wouldn't be able to tell you even if I knew -- and not just ethically; I'm pretty sure language would completely break down along the way. But it was stopped, contained, before it could reach the full totality of everything. And as a direct side-effect, you were contained, too.

Do you remember the third loop? Obviously after those first 22 minutes, you only remember what I told you, rather than the experience itself, but that's actually a perfect metaphor: imagine the difference between you just hearing about how you mourned and despaired and slowly froze to death, and you actually experiencing it. That's about the level of difference between what happened on that third loop, and what happened here.

You were alone. This wasn't just watching the stars go out and knowing there was little chance of meeting another life form before you died; this was being plunged into an incomprehensible void knowing instantly and with complete, unshakable certainty that there was nothing else in existence besides you -- and, simultaneously, knowing that even you did not exist.

Somehow, you didn't take it very well. You screamed a lot. (For someone who shouldn't have had any air to breathe, you screamed a lot.) You frequently punched and kicked at the nothing in front of you, owing to frustration, hallucinations, and involuntary spasming. You punctuated everything you did with crying.

Possibly the worst part was that you still had all your senses, all those little signals and receptors that, back when you properly existed, could efficiently communicate across your entire body as a means of identifying problems and sorting them out. But there was no "sorting out" being completely outside of reality; no remedy for being thrust so far into nonexistence that you burst out the other side. So you saw an infinite, high-speed phantasmagoria, even when you closed your eyes; your nose and mouth suddenly remembered everything they had ever smelled or tasted all at once, good and bad; your skin itched, stung, tingled, and crawled; you experienced Turbo Tinnitus times ten.

And that was just the start of it. You have so many more senses than just the common five. So you also felt hungry, and thirsty, and tired; and burstingly full, and overhydrated, and fizzing with energy; freezing and burning; you felt like you were falling and spinning in every direction; you felt nauseated, and disoriented, and like you were trapped in amber and being torn to shreds from the inside out. You felt like time was simultaneously passing at unimaginable speeds and slowed to an imperceptible crawl. You could hear your erratic heartbeat in every part of your body and you frequently hyperventilated so badly that your chest seized, and you could not convince your lungs to breathe, please, for the love of anything, just breathe, no matter how much you choked and silently pleaded.

You had nothing to sustain yourself on a biological level -- no air, food, or water -- and yet for some reason you kept moving, kept thinking, kept going, even when by all rights you should have depleted your every last molecule of energy. This wasn't like your time on the Quantum Moon, either; there your existence was merely a perpetual uncertainty, a prolonged miracle of life maintained on the condition that, eventually, your chronology broke down and you thinned out into meaningless noise.

That was a far kinder death. Here, in a place where "time" meant even less than it did near the Eye, you didn't stop for an eternity of eternities, even when by all rights you should have starved, or suffocated, or simply gone catatonic. By the end, if there was ever an end, you resembled the desiccated remains of the Stranger's inhabitants. But you weren't rotting; not in the way any normal organic matter rots. Things only decay because of microbes, and scavengers, and an entire ecosystem of tiny living things that survive by eating dead things. But those didn't exist. There was nothing to eat you into restful oblivion; nothing to stop you from still screaming your throat raw, still willing tear ducts to open even when you had long run dry of tears. You had neither glucose nor technology to keep your mind going, simulated or otherwise; and yet, in the place where nothing exists, your entire being was so thoroughly nothing that you became it -- and because you were nothing, you were. You continued to "be." You continued to suffer.

It was a complete mockery of existence, and the kindest possible way to interpret your memories was that it was all a fabrication -- that your consciousness did not enter a prolonged pseudo-existence after reality disintegrated, but merely conjured up a cavalcade of terrifying illusions in the instant before it perished. It is possible that the experience I remember is a distortion of the truth, the kind that can only happen at the very edge of reality where cause and effect break down and numbers dare not tread. For all I know you died instantly and painlessly.

And yet... I remember all of it.

I did not dream it up; it was not a figment of my imagination. Even if only by the loosest margin -- even if meaning becomes meaningless where the boundaries of existence are drawn -- it was real, and it did happen.

I don't know if your fate was an accident, or a punishment, or even a warning, delivered vicariously through me. I don't know if the universe really has "intent" like that. It's hard to imagine the universe being truly sentient without assuming it's also essentially a god -- the god. The God of Everything. It's especially hard not to expect better, or at least nicer outcomes if you start thinking like that. ("Why did the universe let this happen?") But whatever it is, much like any other living thing, it has a desire to preserve itself. It must. Even if it is not alive by any other definition, there's no way around it. It might just be evolution on a cosmic scale, the universe being what it is precisely because this is the only way it was ever going to survive -- to survive idiots like you playing with toys you barely understand and obliterating everything just because you were curious.

...Sorry. That came out harsher than I wanted. I just mean that, outside of any definable morality or thought process, the universe is what it is because there is nothing else it could be. (Though, maybe I'm wrong about that. Get back to me in a few billion years; maybe I'll have a better understanding by then.)

If it's any help, I don't think the universe hates you. I don't know if it likes you -- assigning any emotional state to it at all is folly already -- but trust me when I say that if something that big really wanted you gone, you would never have looped through time to begin with. It may have even chosen you -- or, heck, maybe it chose Gabbro, but you beat them to the punch. Or maybe it chose nobody. All I can say is, even if you don't have some special, ultimate destiny that was chosen for you, I don't think the journey you went on was a mistake. I meant it when I said you should be proud.

Just... maybe not so proud of what you did in the High Energy Lab; what that other you did; what you would have done had you not experienced the universe shuddering firsthand. You're not on trial here, and you don't need to defend yourself, but I want to make sure you understand that the astronaut that personally experienced oblivion -- that evaporated into a dimensionless nowhere and remembered it -- that wasn't someone else. That was you. I need you to understand that: if you didn't experience that moment of full-body dissonance and run screaming out of the lab, you would have done it, too. The fear and disgust you felt was a defense mechanism, and it was horrid, but it was necessary. It sure prevented you from experiencing something much worse.

So, with that in mind... let's talk about the second time you destroyed everything.

It was inside the Ash Twin.

That thing was a beauty, huh? The vindication in your soul was incredible. All throughout your journey, you found references to the Eye and the Ash Twin Project -- I don't think there's a single planet in your solar system free from writings about them -- but both constantly eluded you. When you finally set foot inside the core of the Ash Twin, there was a tranquil satisfaction suffusing you. You felt like you had entered the final stage of your journey. You were certainly closer than you had ever been.

If there was anything disappointing in your arrival, it was how little knowledge you actually gained. You had been so thorough elsewhere that, by the time you entered Ash Twin's core, you had already learned practically everything it had to share.

This, I gather, is why you patiently waited for the supernova inside the core. That itch in your brain that asked questions and demanded answers was unsatisfied by the Ash Twin's records. You needed to gain something more substantial from this place. You needed to personally see what happened when the loop ended.

You knew a black hole/white hole pair was involved. You knew the supernova powered it. You knew it resulted in information, including your memories, being sent 22 minutes back in time. You assumed this required sending data into a black hole -- but how? And how did it beam all your memories into your head at the start of the loop? You might not understand the process if you saw it, but you could at least get an idea of what it looked like.

You began to hear music as you stood on the rotating ring platform, contemplating the core above you. Given that you started every loop by waking up on Timber Hearth (and the necessary warp pad took several minutes to clear of sand), it was unlikely you could ever see a white hole open up and deliver your memories, but you could at least watch this half of the process -- where the ATP sent information to itself. (You briefly wondered whether this was the front half or the back half. Given that it happened at the end of the loop, but was technically the "first" thing that had happened when your sun originally went supernova, your ponderings remained inconclusive. You still haven't come up with a definite answer, have you? Don't worry; I haven't either.)

Soon, the sun played its final note of despair. Above you, like two metallic flowers, the casing around the warp core unfurled as the supernova enveloped the Ash Twin. Glowing lines of energy pulsed along the thick wires connecting the Project to the massive solar arrays outside, and sure enough, the warp core summoned a black hole. You watched with fascination as three streams of Nomai writing -- one for you, one for Gabbro, and one for the tracking module inside Giant's Deep -- were pulled from the three glowing masks, each dutifully marching through the air into the past.

If the loop had fully concluded just a few seconds sooner, you might not have repeated the most dangerous thought you ever had. (The one that starts, "What would happen if...?" and ends all of time and space.) You at least might not have had enough time to act on it. But the loop lasted, and you thought, and you acted.

Of course, I'm sure you don't remember acting. What you remember is having that thought, and then instantly freezing in place as your skin prickled and a shiver ran down your spine. Nothing so bad as in the High Energy Lab, but then nothing so bad was necessary. The universe had already beat you over the head with its big stick; this time, it only had to brandish it menacingly for you to behave.

Would that the universe had better predictive capabilities. The kind that might stop you from ever playing with black holes to begin with; that would prevent the memories I've already recounted. But I suppose it can't be helped -- and besides, it's not your fault the Nomai were such gifted engineers that their technology was as dangerous as it was everlasting. (It just might be your fault for playing with it so recklessly.)

You did not shatter spacetime when you jumped into the black hole. In fact, to your perspective, the loop simply ended as normal once you were sucked inside.

When you woke up on Timber Hearth, you thought it was anticlimactic. You felt cheated. No sparks flew, no confetti announced your success; you didn't even wake up inside the Ash Twin!

Except you did. Another you did. (Another another you.)

They experienced more or less what they expected: they leaped into a black hole, and came out a white hole in the exact same spot. They were sharp enough to understand what happened, but could not grasp why the warp pad would not let them leave -- not until a few minutes of panicking had passed, anyway. Then they took off their jetpack, settled against the wall, and simply hoped you would find them -- if only so they didn't have to spend the whole loop stuck inside a planet.

You didn't find yourself right away, (though who has?) but you did notice that when you opened your map to plan an itinerary, the map had the unmitigated gall to tell you you were in two places at once. In your confusion, you nearly got out of your ship to bug Slate about it, but you quickly smartened up after realizing where that second "YOU ARE HERE" was pointing.

It was a grueling wait until you could find out more -- grueling for both of you -- and you experimented with various methods of clearing away the sand yourself, none of which particularly helped. Taking off your jetpack and using it like a leafblower was entertaining, though.

When you finally did make it inside, you were genuinely surprised to find that there were, in fact, two of you. (Seeing is believing.) The you that had taken the opportunity to lean against a wall played it cool, and nodded at you. You nodded back.

You then had a terribly exciting conversation, which consisted of both of you discussing your past and present, taking turns to scream in panic, and notably, chancing the opinion, "Maybe the universe doesn't mind two of us."

Strictly speaking, you were right. It doesn't mind two of you any more than it minds a stable time loop. What it does mind is paradoxes.

The you who exited the white hole raised this concern first, but ultimately neither of you could be sure what would happen. Neither of you remembered creating a paradox in the High Energy Lab. You were (understandably, if regrettably) curious to find out.

And you did find out. When the loop ended, neither of you jumped into the Ash Twin's black hole -- an act which would have sustained your second self's chronological existence. Instead, you had both hopped in your ship to share your discovery with Gabbro, in an encounter which surely would have become a three-way tryst for the ages if you only had the time. Alas, the universe ended even more passionately than it normally did, and when reality collapsed all around you, you were swept up in much the same cosmic damage control as you had been in the lab.

Only this time you were not alone. Interestingly, your double -- the one who exited the white hole -- had an almost identical experience to the you that created the scout paradox. They witnessed only the void and their own unceasing misery. But you -- the one who woke up on Timber Hearth -- you saw that other you.

I don't know why. There should have been no light to see by -- there should have been no room in the visual static that was overriding your sight for them to be visible -- but nonetheless you saw them. Saw yourself. You could only see them from behind, but here neither of you had so much as a spacesuit to obscure you. You could not be sure they were not a hallucination. (You could not be sure you were not a hallucination.) Every time you tried to get their attention, the attempt was drowned out by screaming, and you could not tell who it came from. And in your terror, you wondered if another you was behind you as well, staring at your back, unable to face anything else. Unable to do anything but weep, wither, and writhe. Just like you.

Charitably, you could still have been hallucinating. It's possible you only saw yourself because you expected to. It's possible that, cognitively, destroying reality is equivalent to instantly spending a lifetime in a sensory deprivation tank. (Wait, do you know what that is? Shoot. Uh, imagine going into the zero-g cave without any light -- without anything -- and just... staying there. It's pretty easy for even a healthy mind to hallucinate if it's not getting any stimulus. Some people go mad within minutes.)

Regardless, past seeing your double, the experience was virtually identical to the iteration in the lab. I won't bother repeating myself, and I'm sure you don't need any reminding. I think we can safely conclude the "ghost story" portion of these tales.

Be thankful you didn't have to see this firsthand. Be thankful, if you can, that trying these stunts didn't permanently end your journey. Hate me for sharing these memories if you must, but be thankful.

...Hm. Let's take a break, shall we? You've sat around the campfire listening to me ramble patiently enough. (You also look a little green around the gills.) Go on! I'm not stopping you. Stretch your legs; get a drink if you can find one; roast as many marshmallows as you please. There's no time limit here -- at least, not one that's very pressing. ...It's fine! Go, and don't settle down until you feel ready to continue.

I mean it. We're past the worst of it now, but this next part's a doozy.

Chapter Text

Ready to keep going? Good, good.

Don't worry, we're almost done. Well, we're halfway there. ...More or less.

And listen: I know I've been talking your ear off with these stories, but they are your stories. And I know it's tempting to sit across the fire while I talk and think they're my stories, but they ain't. They're yours. Don't forget that.

Now. Let's talk about the Stranger.

You were pretty excited almost the entire time you spent investigating it. That's no bad thing; if you weren't excited to discover that an alien race had parked a world-sized spaceship in your solar system without anyone noticing, I'd think there was something wrong with you.

It's practically a miracle you discovered that thing. I mean you were, what, maybe two loops away from heading for the Eye of the Universe? You had all the pieces of the puzzle, all assembled nice and neat, and other than steeling yourself to finally do it, nothing stood in your way.

And then, in a flash of sentimentality, you wandered around the museum one last time, just to remember where you started your 22-minute journey. And you remembered, seeing those photos of the radio tower, that you never paid it the visit you meant to.

You had been so caught up in everything else going on that it completely slipped your mind. It seemed unimportant now, at the end of the universe. You nearly ignored that impulse you felt -- that feeling that, even if it was going to be destroyed twenty minutes from now, you still owed it the courtesy of seeing it for yourself.

It was a good instinct to go there. And I don't just mean because you discovered a whole new mystery to salivate over; it was a good instinct to go there just so you could say you had. Just so that rickety tower would be that much less lonely, even if only for a few moments. A lesser Hearthian wouldn't have bothered. But your care is what brought you here. You couldn't have made it any other way.

...Alright, to phrase that more accurately, obviously you could have made it here. All it took was piecing together a few critical pieces of information, and putting the right keys in all the right locks. The biggest physical challenge was just being patient enough to get here without becoming an anglerfish's lunch. But without your care, you wouldn't have made it here. Your soul, your spirit; whatever you wanna call it, the stuff and fluff that make you you wouldn't have made it here if you ignored your instincts. If you simply became a slave to going from point A to point B, unthinking, unfeeling, unconcerned with what was happening around you -- with what happened to you. You probably wouldn't have spared me a second glance if you lost sight of it all. I shudder to imagine what would happen if someone like that collapsed the Eye. (For more reasons than you know.)

Anyway: even though you were so close to finishing your journey, and you could feel that fact in your bones, you decided to visit the radio tower. And for your trouble, you were rewarded with wonders beyond your imagining.

But you've probably already guessed I'm not here to talk about wonders, huh? I can't deny it. I'm not here to sing your praises either; if you want someone to stroke your ego, you can stroke it yourself. (And do it somewhere private, will ya?)

You already know how ravenously you tackled the challenges aboard the Stranger. You were relentless, practically unstoppable, and I'll admit: you did some damn fine work. But now it's time to hear about all the astronauts that had to pick up where you left off.

You left quite a trail of them behind you.

I'd been mulling over how to start this one for a while, even before you showed up, and if I'm being honest I still don't know if I've got it figured out. But what I'm about to tell you is the honest truth, and I need you to understand that, alright? I'm not yanking your chain, I'm not being metaphorical; I'm just giving you a healthy dose of perspective before we start this good 'n' proper. Got it? Then listen up:

You weren't the first one to open the vault.

Now, we could sit here and play the worst kind of ontological semantics, because the whole point of these stories is that that it was you -- but it was another you -- but for all intents and purposes it was you -- but --

You get what I mean. And if you don't: the memories you have of opening the vault? That wasn't the first time you did it. In fact, that was about... the twenty third time.

And the only reason that number is so small is because you didn't spend more than thirty five loops exploring the Stranger -- and among those loops, the earlier ones especially, you frequently died to regrettable and avoidable circumstances. That is, you did, and every "you" you never remembered did, too.

To put it another way: I'm sure you remember dying to things like chancing the raging rapids without a raft, or being electrocuted by those exposed wires near the Hidden Gorge, or on one memorable occasion, exiting the bell that contained the vault right as the dam burst, ultimately being trapped against the wreckage from the water pressure. (It's a good thing Gabbro taught you how to meditate, otherwise that one would have been even worse -- for all of you.) The first time these deaths happened to the "primary" you -- the cohesive string of memories I'm talking to right now -- you instantly knew better for next time, and so did everyone that came after. The yous that got left behind in those early explorations, though? They didn't have the benefit of hindsight. Many of them died within the hour to a stupid mistake.

But the ones that didn't... all of them managed to enter the vault.

Now, if you remember your time on the Stranger well enough, a few alarm bells might already be ringing in your head. "That shouldn't be possible," you might be thinking. (And now, judging by your face, you're waiting for me to tell you how wrong you are. Patience.) You're not stupid for thinking it. By the end of the loop, two of the "campfires" that act as connection points to that dream world wind up extinguished: first the one in the River Lowlands, after the dam breaks, and then the one in Cinder Isles, when the tower collapses. And while you were able to access virtually every part of that dreamspace from any fire thanks to those dinky little dream rafts, you couldn't visit anyplace you hadn't already "unlocked" from that area's local fire. And that puts a real wrench in accessing the forbidden archives anyplace you didn't unlock before the loop ended.

Even if it were possible to reignite those green flames, you never exactly found a way to unflood those rooms. So what gives? Go on, you can say it. What gives? It's okay, this isn't a trick. You're a smart cookie, but how did all those other cookies open the vault before you did? It's a stumper, and no mistake. (I can see those gears turning in your head. Still got the willpower to tackle one more mystery, hm? Heheh.)

If I'm laying all the cards on the table here, I'd say none of them opened the vault faster than you did. Which is to say -- because metachronology makes this difficult enough to talk about -- while you accomplished it in roughly twelve hours of looping (not including premature deaths), and even though they each did it on an "earlier timeline," every other version of yourself took longer to do it.

Ultimately, most of them never entered those forbidden archives or saw those secret reels -- the ones that were essentially error reports documenting little glitches in the simulation. Some of them got at least one, especially the ones who remembered seeing them in a previous loop, but only you saw all of them.

Lucky for them they didn't need them: They had all the time in the universe. (Okay, at best they had the rest of your lifespan, but that was still plenty of time.)

You only used those glitches because, no matter how much you looked, every last trace of the correct combinations for those three locks had been scrubbed out of existence. And someone like you, who still had every little mystery to chase for the same 22 minutes? You didn't need the combinations. You followed one unraveling thread after another, and you followed them no matter where they took you. Every time you learned a new glitch, you were excited to try it out, and even moreso to apply them to removing those seals. You solved everything beautifully, but you did it through a path that was only available to you while you were looping through time.

But imagine, if you will, what you would have done if you weren't looping. If you didn't have the foresight to open up every dock before the loop ended, and had no recourse afterward. What then?

You weren't a quitter, I can say that much for you. Every body you left behind as you looped, each with an increasingly better starting place, they all wanted the same thing you did: to find out. And when they realized nothing was coming for them, and after the supernova there was nowhere else to go... they each shrugged their shoulders, cracked their knuckles, and got to work.

Frankly I could spend hours talking about the impressive lengths each "you" went to, faced with their own incomplete understanding of the same sprawling puzzle -- but I already said I'm not here to praise you. Besides, other than a few variations, it was mostly the same. You always explored everything you could, as best you were able; you always made good use of the information you learned before the loop ended; and you always ended up sleeping at the vault's campfire, thinking the same thing: "I know how to open that vault."

Alright, alright, I can tell I've kept you in suspense long enough, but for what it's worth, the answer's not that exciting:

You brute-forced it.

All three combinations; solved with nothing fancier than trial and error. Sorry if you were expecting yourself to be smarter than that -- but for what it's worth, it was about the smartest thing you could do, given the circumstances.

Every time you realized you had searched high and low and had nothing else left, you saw two options: give up and die, or go forward. You always chose to go forward. And that meant leveraging the fact that you had idle hands and nothing but free time to occupy them.

Some quick math for ya: each combination consisted of five "digits," and each digit could be one of eight symbols. Eight to the power of five is 32,768. So thats thirty-two thousand possibilities each for three locks. Supposing you were extremely unlucky, and had to go through every possible combination before you found the right one, and supposing it only took you one second to try each combination, that's... roughly twenty seven hours to unlock the vault. Exhausting, but very doable, right? (You sure thought so.)

If we factor in the fact that you didn't have to try every possible combination, and that while it was probably the most annoying to check, the invisible bridge combo was also the easiest -- you could simply try to walk across with each change of the dials, which meant at most 40 tries -- the necessary time investment only goes down. Still, it's safe to say that since they all had to brute-force it from scratch, none of them remembering the others' attempts -- and all of them started somewhere you left off, each iteration having another loop added to their timer before diverging -- you still did it the fastest. So you can take some pride in that.

Now, as for why I bring all this up... every "you" you left behind always had to crack at least one combination by force. As a result, you also always opened the vault without feeling the need to die for that third seal.

Getting the picture yet? I can see realization dawning in your eyes. What happened next?

Obviously, for you, that was it. You solved all the mysteries, you unlocked the vault, and you freed the prisoner. And when that prisoner left one last recorded thought for you, an invitation on the riverbank for you to join them in oblivion, you obliged. It was heartfelt, and it was bittersweet, and it was poignant -- and it was the instant end of that loop and your time on the Stranger. You did not travel to the Eye of the Universe for several more loops, still feeling the need to prepare yourself, but you did not revisit the Stranger. You knew in your soul that there was nothing else left to find, and even if there was, you couldn't bear to look.

You weren't the only one to think that.

You -- every "you" that experienced that twenty third minute and beyond -- always struggled after meeting the prisoner, feeling the weight of that grief, that sorrow for a kindred spirit, burning deep in your soul. None of you had the safety of a time loop to back you up, to support you in the darkness that swallowed you after the prisoner's departure. The only inhabitant that did not instantly attack you, the only one who shared any of your passion for the Eye, had vanished just as soon as you had found them. What was left?

None of you succumbed to despair so thoroughly that you did anything rash, but it was a tough question to answer. Once all the mysteries were solved and gone, or at least as solved as you could make them, what was left? Once all the stars had died and left you with nothing but a tremendous, empty spaceship to wander, what was left? Once the only friend you would likely ever find in this place was gone, what was left?

Every day that all twenty two versions of you lived on was lived in pursuit of answering that question.

None of you knew where the Eye of the Universe was, or what it was, or why; and none of you would ever know, here, past the end of the universe, drifting through space in a dying vessel full of the undead. And every one of you knew that.

You wished, every time, that you had brought someone with you. You tried, just like you had after the third loop, to convince yourself it would have been better for them. That it wasn't selfish to want to subject someone else to this, that it would be a kindness to you both. Just like the third loop, you never convinced yourself.

I think it is a remarkable shame that all of you -- every last version of you that survived to open the vault after their loop ended -- all of you suffered that same loneliness. A loneliness that could have been instantly rectified if even one of their memories were passed on. A burning desire, felt twenty two times after-hours, that was always the natural result of an extended existence derived from the dregs of a time traveler's tunnel vision.

This is not a moral judgement. I do not mean to shame you for always focusing on the task in front of you, for trying to solve the present mystery rather than philosophize about something you would never remember. It is not your fault that you did not know how often you left yourself behind. It is not your fault that you did not think of yourself sooner than you thought about your actionable goals. You had a purpose, and you followed it dutifully.

But... if ever there was a time to recollect and reflect... that time is now. I hope you agree, because I'm not finished yet.

You were resourceful, at the end of it all. You tried everything you could think of to prolong your life, to find meaning in the meaningless. And you did it while forced to stumble around in the dark.

Here's a fun fact: though its power reserves were vast, the Stranger did not have limitless energy. After a time, apparently on some protocol following its evacuation from the last star in the universe, it entered a kind of sleep mode. This directly led to the artificial sun in the Stranger being extinguished, along with the vast arrays of screens that would be just as black if they were left on. Whether you liked it or not (and you did not), both the waking world and the dream world were blanketed in darkness before your first day on the Stranger was over.

The darkness wasn't all bad. It was initially scary, ominous and full of uncertainty, but you had always finished your explorations before it swallowed you. You often regarded it as a peaceful serenity, and you frequently enjoyed lazily rafting along the river to pass the time, open eyes staring past an unseen world into infinity. And for the worse nights, when you felt cold and alone, you still had your trusty flashlight in the waking world. Owing to its sturdy Hearthian design, it lasted you nearly a month before its light was too dim to see by. You rarely noticed, though; you usually had bigger concerns by the end of that first month.

Water, as you might expect, was in constant abundance. It was not the cleanest -- being party to rotting wood for so long was bad enough, and the desiccated alien bodies that recently entered it didn't help -- but the sheer amount of water was large enough that any pollutants only made you feel sick on a cognitive level. Food, on the other hand...

Every version of yourself was, ultimately, able to make use of your ship's supplies, albeit not always with the same ease. After the dam broke, accessing either hangar was effectively impossible from the now-flooded entrances. There was that hidden elevator connecting the hangar to the space above the dam, but the prospect of getting there in a post-dam world was as dangerous as it was difficult. None of you wanted to risk it without the assurance of a time loop to revive you. Your only obvious exit was the hull breach caused by the explosive failure in Hidden Gorge's laboratory.

Naturally, you had the least trouble when your ship was parked just outside the breach, but the rest of you had to force your way into the lab, and then navigate the Stranger's exterior to the correct hangar. Shattering the glass from the observation deck was simple enough, as was quietly exiting the hull, but it was always harrowing having to cross the vast distance to the hangar by jetpack alone. Still, it was always a journey each "you" only needed to make once, and for your bravery you were always rewarded with the full spoils of your ship.

You might not have ever thought twice about the supplies you originally packed while looping through time, but for those astronauts stranded on the Stranger... they frequently lamented not packing more rations.

Twenty two times, you were forced to stare the same manifest in the face: 2 tins of fish, 12 hip flasks of water, 13 cans of marshmallows, and a 15-strong assortment of jugs and pots filled with soups, stews, and sap wines of varying quality, including the especially potent sap wine in your medical cabinet -- the one that was theoretically your analgesic, but realistically was just an emetic.

Twenty two times, you depleted all of it after little more than a week. (Even the wine.)

If there was anything truly edible aboard the Stranger, you never found it -- though not for lack of trying. You sampled every leaf, moss, bark, and stem you could find, hoping against hope that you could at least make a watery stew out of something. Unfortunately, aside from everything being either dead or dying, even your desperate Hearthian stomach couldn't make use of any of it. The only territory you never breached was nibbling any of the alien corpses. Even if none of them would notice, you just couldn't do it. You were desperate for food, but never that desperate.

Not while you still had one last port of call.

It felt, at times, like salvation. It felt, at times, like a comfortable noose. By the end of your first month surviving aboard the Stranger, it nearly felt worse than the alternative -- but only nearly.

At the end of a long battle with starvation, you always had the choice of either dying...

...or dying with an artifact in your hand.

There were often times when you considered simply leaving. Getting in your ship, choosing a random direction, and flying away. Maybe you would stumble across the Eye. Maybe you would find Gloaming Galaxy -- wherever that was. But the facts were always compelling, and crushing: the sky was empty, starving to death hurts, and banking on an impossible gamble with a tiny ship in a massive universe was just death with a ribbon on it. And while the same might be said of following in the footsteps of the Stranger's inhabitants, at least some part of you would live on. At least you could enjoy those precious few moments you had left, before the simulation inevitably failed and the derelict ship housing it finally crumbled.

It's possible, with foresight and temperance, you might have chosen otherwise. It's possible, if you knew more about the Eye of the Universe, you might have taken that final gamble. It's possible you might have even found it.

But in your month aboard the Stranger, bereft of so many alternatives that might have eased your pain, your consistent solace was to sleep before emerald flames and enter a world that offered one last bastion of color and life. No matter how much you tried not to make it a habit, returning to the Hidden Gorge and slipping into that familiar dream always became a natural routine for you. And in the time before you died, you always -- eventually -- reached a tentative accord with the inhabitants.

Yours was an uneasy peace, and at best it could be said they tolerated you -- from a distance. They never warmed up to you so much as they simply stopped bothering to give chase. You never learned their language, or anything about their culture that could not be gleaned from observing their behavior and snooping through unoccupied buildings. But you were tolerated.

The kindest thing any of them did was throw morsels of food at you, usually to shoo you away. Simulated hunger never bit as hard as the real thing, nor could it kill you, but it was always preferable to drive it off when you could. You were thankful, even if those who fed you only regarded you as a nuisance.

In time, you learned to play one of their oft-abandoned instruments. It was cumbersome, made for a bigger body than yours, and you knew little about how to make even a Hearthian instrument sing. You were never offered any help or instruction, and if you tried to play in concert with anyone else, they immediately stopped, the attempt apparently ruined. Still, you learned. You had little else to do.

And as time passed, you continued to visit that dream until one day you were so hungry before entering it that you did not dare try to wake up again.

Despite going on twenty two different journeys, you always arrived at the same destination. And why wouldn't you? Each followed in your footsteps -- each fulfilled your singular purpose of tearing into a juicy mystery until there was nothing left -- and then, deprived of novelty and afraid of death, you escaped to the only place you could.

And once there, you wandered and idled and puttered about, industriously familiarizing yourself with every last inch of that dream as you slowly forgot what the outside world looked like -- what it once looked like, before everything died. No matter how you grieved for your home planet and all those who perished with it, inevitably you could only grieve for your own failing memory, weeping for forgotten faces and fading echoes of a past life.

Still, something burned in you. Or perhaps it merely flickered, beaten mostly into submission by a dark and yawning eternity -- but nonetheless, eventually your experience was the same: you lived as a permanent outcast in a home that was not your own, sleeping on grass under a beautiful simulated sky, doing everything in your power to occupy yourself. And ultimately, you always did something reckless.

Curiously, you did not always die the same way. Most of your deaths were at the hands of an alien, often due to a final, desperate attempt at connection. (Which is to say, you tried to get too close and suffered an instant and painless permanence for it.) They never stopped wanting you gone. But other deaths were different.

One saw you exploring your limits as a once-amphibious species, doing your damnedest to learn how to swim. You were careful to leave your flame on the shore, and tried your best to take it slow, but even in this simulation your body was too heavy, and your gills long gone. It only took one wrong step for you to stumble, choke, and disappear.

Another death resulted from, of all things, an interest in rock climbing. You apparently had become fascinated with the idea of climbing out of the Endless Canyon, owing to boredom and thoughts of escape. The incredible thing is that you actually made it to the top of the rock wall, after much careful perseverance -- only to find that the terrain was merely a thin veneer covering a vast expanse of nothing. There was no volume to the rocks; they were a flat, digital facade covering up an empty void. After pushing yourself to see the limits of the simulation, and when presented with them, you were confused and surprised in equal measure, and lost your grip. You survived the fall... but not the landing.

Perhaps your most reckless stunt was the one that never killed you. (At least not officially.) It happened to one of the few that had accessed a forbidden archive, specifically the one in Shrouded Woodlands. It was the only glitch you knew, and so occasionally you would jump off a raft as it transitioned between areas, just to feel the rush of falling through the sky and landing, unharmed, on solid water. It was all in good fun, until on a whim you navigated back to the empty vault. Something about it drew you inside. And then, for whatever reason, you never left.

Your thoughts are not always clear -- and believe me when I say it is hard to judge the echoes of a dead mind, simulated by alien technology in a spaceship which slowly succumbed to entropy. But if I had to guess... some part of you still grieved for the prisoner that once occupied this place. Perhaps you felt an intense kinship; perhaps you felt you deserved the same punishment. Perhaps you believed it was the only place no one would ever disturb you. Regardless, even if there was never a dramatic clanging of the vault sealing shut behind you, you stayed there.

You had everything you could want to pass the time -- everything that might be present elsewhere in the simulation, anyway. A telescope with a view of the night sky; a comfortable chair to sit in; a musical instrument to play; one of their triangular game boards; even a cup and a refilling decanter of wine. (Being the first tolerable wine you had ever encountered, you relished it.) It might even be said that you were happy there. It might not be true, but it might be said. (Though, even if true, for you to only ever find happiness in a prison within a prison...)

This death was the only one out of your twenty two eternities that actually found the end of eternity. You stayed in one place, fulfilled or broken, until the simulation finally gave out. I don't know how it happened, be it water damage, power failure, or physical collapse; the details are beyond me. Your mind simply winked out. It happened after 1,078 years, though don't expect any more precision from me than that. It was bad enough counting the years.

I could recount to you how many cups of wine you imbibed in that time, or how many songs you played on that instrument, or how often you gazed longingly through that telescope. But I won't. Suffice it to say, you carved a comfortable routine into yourself and you lay within it until the very end.

If you're looking for a moral, clean and neatly packaged, I don't have one for you. Out of twenty two attempts, you only found a lasting peace once. Every other time, you remained restless until it killed you. What does that say about you?

It's not a question I can answer. It's up to you to consider. Was the one right? Or the other twenty one? Or all, or none? You can answer it however you like, so long as it's your answer.

...Not ready yet? That's alright. I know I've put a lot before you to think about. I know the journey I'm asking you to go on is not one you're familiar with, let alone comfortable. It probably feels like an unwelcome hurdle, especially here, so close to the finish line. I appreciate the effort you've already put in just by stopping to listen. Don't worry; you'll get there in the end. You're good at doing that.

Just keep at it. We're nearly there now.

Chapter Text

...

I have tended this campfire for many lifetimes, you know.

Not all in one go. It doesn't work like that here. Here, in the Eye, continuity is more of a suggestion than a rule.

But I have maintained it. I have remembered the best campfire you ever made -- the one you sat around for hours until its very last embers had gone out, until every atom of pine log had been reduced to crumbling ash -- and I have kept it burning, in my memory if not in reality. I had to.

How else could I ask you to sit across from me and entertain my desperate ramblings?

...Sorry, I'm... getting a bit sentimental. (Excuse me, there's smoke in my eyes.) I've been sentimental the whole time, of course, but I feel it now more than ever. This close to the end... even after an uncountable number of unmeasurable lengths of time... letting it all go never gets any easier. (Or maybe I'm just exceptionally bad at it.)

I tried to be clever, you know? Sitting across from you, my face always somewhat obscured by the smoke and flames between us. But that was stupid of me. Sight is less important than it's ever been here. You don't have to see to understand in this place, and you knew in your soul what I was even before I opened my mouth and spoke in your voice. Though, I want to set the record straight.

I am not the Eye of the Universe. And I am not you. I may look like you -- and if the rasp your mind has put in my throat is any indication, I may look like a much older you -- but I am not you. I contain you, and you contain me -- and I contain the Eye, and the Eye contains me -- but in this place, beyond the end of everything, I can only ever be a hollowed out memory of you. And now that you're here, my apogee is behind me; everything that I am is soon to fade. You'll have longer than I will, though you shouldn't linger.

Y'know, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. (That's a compliment.) I wouldn't be here if the Eye wasn't the weirdest damn place in the universe. But I'm running out of stories to tell, and most of the ones I have left aren't that interesting. Still, I think I can spin one last yarn for ya, out of all these little threads.

It's the least I can do. You deserve to know why I'm here. And I know I've been encouraging you to slow down a moment and think about everything, but...

You deserve to know why you shouldn't linger.

I thought I was being clever when I made it here.

I didn't have the full story -- not the way you have it -- but I had enough. I knew about the Vessel, and the Ash Twin Project, and the Eye's coordinates, and I even knew about the anglerfish. What more did I need? I practiced the path from the Ash Twin to the Vessel exactly once, and the next loop, I took the warp core with me.

I did it flawlessly. I even showboated a little, just because I could. Doing little stunts mere meters away from anglerfish, dancing next to skeletons while I drew alien shapes on the bridge of the Vessel. It felt like a fitting reward to see something massive and incomprehensible on the other side of that warp. I beamed down without hesitation, and confidently strolled to the south pole and jumped into the swirling vortex without a second thought.

Except I didn't.

What I did was panic, because my sun kept exploding, and I flew away from my own solar system, and in a millions-to-one chance I flew in the exact direction of the Eye of the Universe.

And I fell right into it.

And I crashed into the surface and died.

And I flew past it, not understanding what I had even seen, but moving too fast to course-correct back towards it.

Except I didn't do any of that.

I was clever -- too clever for my own good -- and when I saw the complex assembly that had been in orbit around Giant's Deep for my entire life suddenly light up with a flash and shoot something out of it, I instantly and furiously did complex math in my head to sear its trajectory into my mind, and rushed to the Observatory to get the launch codes, and made it into space and followed the Nomai probe--

and I did that nine million times, chasing nine million trajectories, never remembering those other attempts--

and I got the math wrong millions; billions; trillions of times--

and I got it right, at least once, and then gave up on following it before it finished its flight--

and I patiently stared at it as my ship matched its velocity, bored out of my mind, not entirely sure why I had even done this but still sure that I needed to--

and I stayed with it until it found the Eye of the Universe, which was a name I never thought to call it, because that was a name I had only ever read once and I had no idea what I just found, but I immediately landed on it and boggled at the crushing gravity and the ceaseless quantum storm raging across what I still naively thought was just a weird planet--

Except that's still not how it happened.

And that's different from saying it didn't happen, because it did happen -- all of it very much happened -- but I didn't do it. You didn't do it either. And both of us, we did do it, but we didn't do it.

...I thought it would be easier to talk about than this, at the end of everything, but it still isn't. Some things you just never really find the right words for.

Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? I made it to the Eye. I cheated, or I got lucky, or I took shortcuts -- but I made it.

But I didn't finish the job. The one thing that we all have in common -- all of us except, hopefully, you -- is that when we entered the Eye, we didn't collapse it. We couldn't. We stood on the precipice, looked into that swirling abyss, and stayed rooted to the spot. Or we jumped in, but never landed. Or we arrived in a memory of a fragment of Timber Hearth, usually the museum, and we never left. And we never died, but we never lived; you can't call what I'm doing living.

And the longer we stayed where we were, the more we didn't stay who we were. And we fell to bits, or we evaporated, or dissipated, or even exploded if we were feeling dramatic; and none of us remained, but all of us went somewhere.

I don't know where. I don't know where "here" is. Theoretically it's the Eye, but if this is the Eye then what were we standing on before jumping in here? And if this place is made up of our thoughts and memories, even if in an oblique way, how can we be sure any of it is real? And even if it's not real, does that matter? Does the edge of reality have to "mean" or "be" anything, so long as once this whole song and dance is concluded, something new happens afterward?

...To be honest, I'm not sure what I'm saying anymore. And the worst part about that is I've practiced this conversation a thousand times before you got here. And I think I've already had it. I think I remember having already had it, while having it with you again. I think I've remembered remembering it thousands of times; a perfect fractal. I don't know how far back it goes. The longer I look, the less I am. And the less I am, the more I have to stop and think and focus on myself just so I don't disintegrate into the quantum wind.

...

Sorry. I'm probably scaring you. I'm probably scaring myself, though I don't think I've realized it yet. Let me back up.

I'm not you. You remember that, right? Good.

And I'm not anyone else. But I am everyone who reached this place, in one way or another. And I'm none of them. And I'm in-between -- the remnants of what once was, the dying cinders of what used to be a fire on what used to be firewood that used to be a tree that used to be the dirt that fed it that used to be the animal that decomposed there that used to be -- but the important part is, I remember what they remembered.

And they remembered a lot. Some of them remembered things they shouldn't have been able to remember. I think some of them remembered what the Eye remembered, but like hell if I know how a rock can get so big and quantum it starts remembering things, let alone so much.

And it's not just you I'm talking about, by the way. You're not the only one to ever reach this place. You are in this universe, but there are -- were -- other universes, and the universe has been around a lot longer than you'd think. Except it hasn't, because this is a new one -- except it's still the same universe, just with a fresh coat of paint. It all blurs around the edges, until the edges aren't edges anymore and everything bleeds together and where you are isn't where you were and where you were isn't where you're going (except when it is) and what you are stops being something and starts being everything and nothing and, somehow, something else too.

And it goes on like that, and it doesn't stop going on like that -- until it does.

And then something new happens.

I don't know when it will. I think it will when you decide it will. When you decide it will.

And I think it is you. It's not me; it's not anyone I used to be. We couldn't do it, remember?

I couldn't tell you precisely why. Maybe the Eye forbade us, somehow. Maybe we forbade ourselves. Some of us had regrets. We even had regrets we shouldn't have been able to have, because how can you regret never visiting the Quantum Moon when you don't even know it's possible? How can you regret not entering the Interloper when the idea of entering a ball of rock and ice sounds so banal and pointless that it feels like regretting never falling into the sun? (Okay, bad example; painful as it is, falling into the sun and living to tell the tale is pretty cool.) But whatever happened to us, we stopped short of the finish line. And we didn't have someone rambling at us telling us to think hard about what we did next, or what we did before; we were all alone, every last one of us, and we stayed here for months and decades and minutes until we disappeared and sprinkled the Eye with every last fading spark that we once were.

I don't know why all those sparks came together and made me. (It's like building a star out of campfire embers -- and it's just as short-lived.) There are a surprising number of things I don't know. Which, I guess, means there are a surprising number of things the Eye doesn't know. Which might mean The Universe doesn't know, either; though since one of the things I don't know is whether the Eye and the Universe are the same thing, the jury's out on that one.

...

What was I talking about? Right, right. You. Me. Us.

Sorry if I sound frantic. I only just remembered how to be frantic. It's exciting and terrible. You should try it sometime. Not now, though.

What you should do is... breathe. Imagine your lungs, imagine the air going into them, make sure you do it where smoke isn't, and breathe. You're good at that. You're better at it than I ever was. (I didn't talk to Gabbro enough. I didn't appreciate them.)

You want to know something? I'm pretty sure you're it. You're going to collapse the Eye of the Universe. It's going to be great. I was pretty sure ever since you got here, but now I'm certain. You know why?

Because I can't remember you doing it.

There are so many things that didn't happen that I can remember happening that at this point it's more logical to assume that if I can't remember something happening, that means it's going to happen! Makes sense, right?

...No, it doesn't make sense. Which, admittedly, doesn't count for much here, but that's no reason to go devolving into madness.

Hi. Sorry about that, I forgot myself; but I think I just remembered again. (There's smoke in my eyes.)

And I think it's important that you know that who I am, and who I was, isn't necessarily you. Not as much as all the tales I've been telling you.

There's a reason I've only been telling you about what happened to you after your loops ended. (Before now, anyway.) They were your experiences; all of them. They were the experiences you would have had and would have remembered, if only you were there to see them firsthand. And I want to be clear about this: these aren't hypotheticals. These aren't parallel universes, or alternate timelines; even when you destroyed reality and didn't remember it, that was still you. And destroying reality was a special case, because you invited cosmic intervention; but that's very different from, say, flipping a coin, and theorizing about all the different ways it could come down. (It always comes down the same way if you always throw it the same way.)

...

Even if you don't remember them, because the string of memories that you are never included those experiences, it was still "you." At worst it was one single deviation away from you; the pruned branch from a tree that was never meant to keep growing; a branch that ultimately didn't matter, because it still died in the end, and it never had a chance of being reattached to that tree while the tree was still alive and growing.

But then I happened. I wanted to give that branch a second chance, even if I'm just a dead gardener playing with dead wood. I was worried I wouldn't have enough time -- but I kept happening. I couldn't stop happening. I only happened here, but I happened enough that all the parts of me came together and became convinced that we were an "I," and that I had to mean something. Even if I wasn't meant to free my mind and conjure a new universe with the help of the Eye, maybe I could still help you do it.

I might be wrong about that. For all I know I'm just an echo of a memory; but that's quitter talk. And besides, you can't just chalk up everything weird you see to your mind playing tricks on you. Especially not here. Anything can happen here. Anything will happen here. I remember it happening before. I remember other people, other species, other universes, and how they always culminated in someone, eventually, finally, entering the Eye and doing the only thing they could.

And I remember the weight of that decision, for each of them. Their names, faces, and bodies are gone, and the fragments that remain are jumbled and nonsensical and even more disparate than the pieces of "me" that came from "you," and (apparently) they're a good sign that even the Eye can forget.

It's not a bad lesson. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not bad. That nothing lasts forever. That, ultimately, we only ever have the present moment, and if we're lucky, the next one after it.

...

A lot of people weren't so lucky. We weren't so lucky. Every twenty two minutes, on our very first launch day, we got to be unlucky all over again.

But, all things considered, you were also very lucky. I was very lucky, but I didn't earn it the way you did, so I didn't deserve it. I don't deserve the responsibility of creating something new, and especially not something so important as the Universe.

Maybe I don't deserve the burden I've taken onto my shoulders, of trying to compile and share something old and forgotten, to bend my last gasps of existence to teaching you something I could never learn -- but I decided to do it anyway. I decided it was better than just twiddling my thumbs until there wasn't enough left of me to twiddle.

And so I waited. And I thought. And I remembered. And I waited, and remembered, and thought some more. And I kept doing that, and for all I know there were frequent gaps in my "existence" where there simply wasnt enough of me to go on -- but I always happened some more, so I kept holding onto the one idea I could think to hold onto.

...

Eventually you showed up. And I knew it was the beginning of the end, but I didn't let that stop me. I took off my helmet, smiled at you as warmly as I could, and waved you over to your humble fire. And you joined me.

And I told you a story. Several stories, long and winding and unfortunate and as fundamentally yours as I could make them.

And here we are. And I'm out of stories.

...

I don't have much time left. I'm sure you've guessed as much. I don't know what this looks like to you, but I know what it feels like to me.

Do me a favor, will ya?

...

Keep going. Keep thinking. Keep remembering. And when you reach the end of this place...

...

Make it a good one.

...

...

...

Chapter Text

...

...

...?

Uh?

Was that it? Are you done?

...

Guess so. Huh. Um, okay then.

Guess I'll... "make it a good one." (Was that what you said? You were really quiet at the end.)

...

Right. You're probably not here anymore. I'm just talking to myself now. (I mean, I already was... except I wasn't? Sigh.)

...Fire's still here. Can't hurt to enjoy it a little longer, right? I don't exactly see a better place around here to sit and think, so...

Hmf. Yeesh, wish I brought a chair. (But then, I kinda missed sitting in the dirt like this...)

...

You've really put a lot on my shoulders, y'know that? What am I even supposed to think about, exactly? Just... your stories? Sorry -- "my" stories? Is that it? That can't be it. There's more, right?

...Well, I'm sure they're a good starting point, at least. Let me see...

I think... my journey would have been different, had I remembered even one of those experiences before coming here. Maybe even radically different. I mean... freezing after the heat death of the universe? Shattering reality? Falling in love with a Nomai? Anyone would be changed by that kinda stuff! And you're telling me I did all of those things -- and more? It feels like being told a crazy dream you had was actually real. Except I don't even remember having the dream...

And after hearing about all that, I feel like I should somehow just think about it and... come to some kind of perfect conclusion about it all. Like, "oh! Now I get it! I'm only here because of my friends!" ...But I'm not sure there's anything like that waiting for me.

To be honest, it feels insane! Like, oh hey, just so you know, a bunch of people who thought they were you and had all your memories and were basically you had to deal with getting left behind while you were having your big adventure, and this happened fairly often. But don't worry! You never remembered them, so now a ghost made up of a million ghosty fragments is going to take you aside and tell you about all of them. I mean, not to sound ungrateful, but what the heck?! The fact that I'm not completely freaking out about this is kind of freaking me out!

...

Fweh. It would help if I knew what, exactly, I'm supposed to do here. I mean, you mentioned making a new universe, and... that's kind of in line with what I know?

The inhabitants of the Stranger scanned the Eye, and while they didn't finish watching the vision they received after seeing everything die, that vision showed new life... grass grew from their remains, and the start of a flower, too... and I wasn't the only one to think that. That burned house in the simulation, the one that probably belonged to the prisoner... there was a painting in there. It was beautiful. And it showed that flower, which looked like the Eye of the Universe, growing out of that skull and releasing... pollen, maybe? But pollen that looked like little galaxies. Little galaxies like the ones I saw on the way in here... Little galaxies like the ones that have all died out, because now dying is the only thing left for everything in the universe.

But somehow I'm supposed to make a new universe? Somehow I'm supposed to take all this death and make it into life again? Kind of a tall order, boss! I don't exactly have a career history with making... well, anything, frankly, besides some fires, a couple craters, and a translator tool sitting at the top of it all -- and that was something I had help with! A lot of help!!

You could have at least left a piece of paper with some instructions on it. Couldn't you? Or, I don't know... a chalkboard with some questions to answer, or something. Any better sense of direction than "think and remember"?

Ugh. Well, whatever... Not my first freeform homework assignment. (Just the first one in a while...) And I don't see anything else to do around here...

...

...Hm. I wonder...

In a universe before this one... were there ever people who knew what the Eye was before coming here?

I mean, it feels like a one-way trip, so maybe it'd be impossible to tell anyone outside the Eye what it does... but people have successfully scanned it before. So it has to be possible to understand the Eye, on some level, before arriving here, right?

I wonder if people ever argued about who should come here. I mean, probably, right? "Who gets to create the next universe?" Seems like an important question.

Seems like a question I shouldn't be the one answering. Even with what you said. I mean, okay, maybe you were right and you didn't deserve to collapse the Eye -- but what makes me so special? I don't feel special. It's not like I climbed into the Nomai Vessel thinking, "finally! I get to create a new universe!"

Although I guess that's not fair to say. It's not like I knew back then. But that's also kind of my point? Why should some yokel who basically stumbled into this place by accident get to do it? Or, well, not an accident; I was specifically trying to chase down the Eye. I may not have known for sure what was here, but I knew I wanted to go here... I very much had to intentionally decide on it. But I didn't know what I'd find. Is it really okay for someone like me to be saddled with making a new universe?

...

I think, obviously, the Nomai should have gotten to do it. They were all so curious, and intelligent, and thoughtful, and... I dunno. It's not like Hearthians aren't those things, but the Nomai were so elegant, and if I had to choose between me or them, I would definitely choose them. Especially knowing what I know now. How is that fair?

I mean, it's not like I didn't want to come here; I wanted to see the Eye for myself! I was willing to risk it all on this one gamble, knowing that whatever I found here, I wouldn't be able to go back. ...Oh my stars, I actually did that, didn't I? Why did I do that?! There could have been another way! Didn't you tell me you got here other ways? I should have done that!

...

...No, I shouldn't have. You called it cheating. I'm not sure if I agree, or really understand what you mean, but... I didn't come here on a whim, or by accident. I came here on purpose. I wanted to find out. I had to find out. I had to find out so badly that after I finished exploring every inch of my solar system I was willing to consign myself to oblivion just to come here and find out. Even if I got a little caught up in it all, and didn't really think about it...

But that's what you've been trying to tell me, isn't it? That I should be thinking about it. I guess you had a lot of time to think about it too, huh? And now I'm supposed to think about it -- and I'm supposed to... do whatever I'm supposed to do. You thought about it so much, I don't see why you couldn't do it. I don't see what's so special about me. Make it a good one... what does that even mean? How will I even know if it's good or not? What makes a universe good?

Well, campfires, for a start. And marshmallows to roast on them. Oh, right! I still have some left. And of course my trusty roastin' stick. ...Wow, I didn't realize how hungry I was! Maybe I'll just roast a few up real quick... But I shouldn't linger, right? So I'll just put a couple on, all at once.

Heheh. They don't teach you this in marshmallow school. (I wish there had been a marshmallow school. Maybe I can make one in the next universe? ...Maybe that's too silly.)

This really is a perfect campfire though, huh? You said I made this? I remember the fire you mentioned, the one I made and stared at... but I don't remember what it looked like all that well. I mean, it was just a fire, right? Who cares what it looks like? A couple of logs, maybe some stones around it, and a good strong flame crackling on top is pretty much all you need.

...

Wait, is this some kind of test? Like, by me saying, it's just a fire, that's the point? Like... it doesn't matter what this fire looks like, because what matters is it's my fire? Is that how memories work here?

Actually, I guess that's kind of how memories work, anyway. Right? You might forget some of the details, things blur around the edges, but... you remember the important parts. The parts that matter. What this fire looks like doesn't matter, because it's the memory of a fire. Of my fire. That fire I made and was so proud of I did a little dance when no one was looking, and then felt embarrassed about dancing anyway, but I was still so happy that I made my own fire and it didn't immediately fall apart or "create a safety hazard" that I sat next to it and watched it burn until it was all gone.

I ate so many marshmallows around that stupid fire... Worst stomachache of my life. I really shouldn't have done that.

Oh, shoot! My marshmallows! They're... fine? Oh. Maybe less time passed than I thought. Or maybe time's broken here. Whatever; they look done, and who could pass up some good, hot eats? nomf...

Hum... I wouldn't mind sitting here for a while and just doing this. Maybe Feldspar and Esker had the right idea, just camping out where no one would bother them, someplace they could get some peace and quiet... It's nice. Just sitting here, roasting marshmallows, watching the little cinders catch on the smoke and rise up into the air, listening to the crickets chirp... wait. Crickets?

They're back! The forest, too. ...Well, duh, you can't have a good campfire without a forest, and you can't have a good forest without crickets. I just thought they went away once you started telling stories. ...Hm. Did I... make the crickets? Or, I guess, did I just remember them, and now they're here? You did tell me I should keep remembering. Wouldn't mind remembering some friends...

Is it that easy, though? Hal, Slate, Hornfels... Anyone wanna show their ugly mug? Anyone? ...No? Dang.

Not even you, huh? Or is it me? No, you said you weren't me. But you used to be, right? Some version of me. Or, versions? I don't know if I really got all that. Can you come back? Will you come back if I remember you hard enough?

...

Do I... need to understand quantum mechanics before I can make the next universe? I don't, right? You never mentioned it. It doesn't seem like something I can remember, either. Not unless I can start remembering what the Eye remembers... but that seemed like it was... bad, somehow. Like, you'd have to be pretty far gone for that to happen. Is that right? I'm not sure you even said that, that's just how it felt.

Ugh, this is the worst. It feels like I'm back in the classroom. Just sitting here, like I'm in detention, just trying to... spontaneously come up with the answer. I still don't know what to make of all those stories -- not besides "I'm kind of careless when I'm focusing on something." Hrmph.

You said I can't run out of marshmallows, right? I'm pretty sure you definitely 100% said that. If I can't run out, don't say anything.

...

Heh. Infinite marshmallows. All the kids back home would be so jealous. ...If there was a home left for them to be jealous on.

Wow. It's not like I didn't know my planet was being eaten by the sun every twenty minutes, but... it just kinda hit me. Now it can't come back, huh? I really should have said my goodbyes...

...Or was it better that I didn't? Why worry everyone with a bunch of sappy, tearful apologies when all that would do is make their last twenty minutes as scary as their last twenty seconds? Would I have even felt better if I did? Guess it's too late to find out. Hrm.

I don't regret it, you know. That's the point of all this, right? Well, saying it like that makes it seem like I'm just saying it, and don't actually mean it -- but I do mean it! I'm glad I got to explore everything, at the end of it all. I wish it hadn't been the end... but the end had to come sometime, right? No use crying over spilled marshmallows. Scary as it is, I'm glad I got to see the end. There's... closure in that.

It's still a little sad that... this is how it all shook out. Heck, it's more than a little sad; it's awful! So many people suffered, and so much of it was so... pointless? ...And what's maybe worse is, what if it wasn't pointless?

I feel like I'm gonna get trapped in my own head if I keep thinking about this, but I also feel like I can't be free of it unless I say it. So...

What if you were right? That the universe is alive. Maybe it can think, and maybe it did have some ultimate destiny in mind. And that's why none of you could collapse the Eye. Seems a little arrogant of me... but I'm here, and I don't see anyone else, so... well, if anyone wants to interrupt me with some pearls of wisdom, by all means! Feel free to come out anytime. Otherwise I'll keep going.

I mean it! I will!

...

Dang, I really hoped that would work. It really is just me, huh? And the crickets. And trees. And this fire. ...Maybe that'll change if I keep thinking; might free up some room in the ol' noggin. What was I saying?

Right. Destiny. I never really believed in that crap; what happens happens, right? Everything is, and we are. (Did I just think that, or did I remember that? ...Or was it both?)

But if I'm here for any reason better than "just because" -- if I'm anyone other than the only one left at the end of a long series of compounding coincidences -- then... maybe I'm here because I was in the perfect position to look back at everything, and still go forward.

That's gotta be it, right? At least, you seemed to think so. And you seemed pretty wise... I don't really think you rambled as much as you thought you did, by the way. I thought you were pretty good at telling stories. I was hooked, at least. (Wait, am I just bragging? But you said you weren't me! Argh.)

The point is, with the time loop, I had plenty of time to look at all the ruins, and all the echoes of the past, and... I had a lot of time to mull it all over. And time suddenly becomes a lot more precious when you only have twenty two minutes of it. And I still probably didn't do enough mulling before I came here, but now that I am here, I can change that. It's the least I can do for everyone that came before, right?

Because you were right. It wasn't just Nomai technology that let me come here. It was also the fact that they didn't get to use it.

And the stupid thing is they suffered so much, and they all died for no good reason! Because some stupid rock full of stupidly deadly ghost matter flew in out of nowhere and just killed them all, just like that. And no other Nomai clan ever knew where they went, and the Dark Bramble messed up their warp somehow, and the deadly, deadly Outer Wilds made their entire time here a constant struggle... and after all that struggling, all they have to show for it is an alien that comes in hundreds of thousands of years later to pick up the pieces. To benefit from their loss.

I still don't think that's fair. What do I have that they don't? I mean, really; if I suppose I was the only one who could have come here, then why weren't the Nomai good enough? I mean, what, were they just bad luck magnets or something? Did they do something wrong in a past life somehow? It doesn't make sense... They didn't deserve what happened to them. I don't deserve to swoop in and take this opportunity from them. I bet they would have made a great universe! And I bet they wouldn't have waited to do it until the very last minute -- unlike some Hearthians I could name.

...

Huh. Was... that why?

...You said the universe has an unerring sense of self-preservation. That "it must" have one. Does that include... not letting the Eye be collapsed before it's time?

Oh stars, my head already hurts thinking about that. It still seems cruel. But... maybe it would have been more cruel, to everyone else in the universe, if the Nomai just... kept going, and didn't stop, and let their curiosity get the better of them? I have to believe they would have been more careful than that. But maybe they wouldn't have been. Maybe that passion burned a little too brightly; maybe they would have ended this universe without a second thought. Or maybe they would do it before they knew what was happening. If the universe let them...

...That can't be it, can it? ...Can it?

Maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe I'm not special. It didn't have to be me. It just is me. But it would help if I knew for sure.

It almost seems to make sense, on a universal scale. Maybe they really wouldn't have been careful. They had a bit of a bad habit of not being careful, or at least some of them did. Escall had the Vessel warp before they let anyone know where they were going; Mallow and Avens fired the probe with enough force to break the cannon; all those kids gleefully climbed on the anglerfish skeleton; they designed the Ash Twin Project to be powered by a supernova! (Even if only reluctantly, they committed to it.) They really are more similar to Hearthians than we give them credit for...

And if all that's true... maybe they wouldn't have waited. Maybe they couldn't have. If your species knew about the Eye, and you knew what it could do, and the only thing stopping you was that it "wasn't time" yet... would that really be enough? Would they even last a hundred years before someone, maybe even some kid, tried to do it? Would it even take a hundred years for someone to succeed?

I would think the universe could have at least made them show up later. So that, right after they built the cannon and the ATP, the sun would reach the end of its lifespan... and they could see it through. But maybe that wasn't possible.

The Stranger's inhabitants blocked the signal... and maybe they were supposed to block it. Maybe, if they didn't, some other species would have arrived in the Outer Wilds after the Nomai; and they wouldn't have waited. Maybe the Nomai would have discovered it again, and maybe they would have entered the Eye too soon... or maybe they would have seen the tragedies that befell their other clan, and quarantined this whole section of space. Maybe... Maybe...

Maybe every other possibility was worse. Somehow... Maybe this really was the best way for everyone. Maybe it's unfair to a lot of people, but it would have been so much more unfair if it happened any other way... Maybe the only ways it would have been "less" unfair just weren't possible.

I wonder what the universe really is capable of. I didn't even think it was "the universe" when I ran out of the high energy lab; I just thought there was something primal and deep in my brain that didn't like what was going on. Like... some forgotten evolutionary instinct, or something. But if that was the universe, then obviously it must be able to do other stuff, too... but maybe it can't. Or maybe it's too dangerous. Or maybe it's something I can't even comprehend, no matter how hard I try.

Sheesh. And it just had to be me, huh? The newest astronaut of the Outer Wilds Ventures, a space program created at the end of the universe... a space program that didn't even last a century before it was over, through no fault of its own. An astronaut with little more than a twinkle in their eye and a passion for understanding...

...

Maybe it really did have to be me. Gabbro is Gabbro, and... maybe no one else could do it, for some reason. For some reason besides not standing next to a statue at the right moment.

I bet Feldspar wouldn't hesitate if they got here. ...I bet if Feldspar made a universe... it would be terrifying.

Okay. So maybe some people really aren't cut out for making a new universe then. Granted. But still... me? Am I really the best candidate? It would be more reassuring if there was just, I don't know... a big blinking sign that said, "YES." Or even just a clipboard lying around. You know, a cute little dossier about me that lists my good qualities, and perfectly explains why I was chosen to do the job. Or at least just says that I was chosen. It would be so much easier.

...But maybe you don't get to create a new universe if you think it's easy.

Maybe you have to struggle. Maybe you have to think about it. At least, maybe you have to if you're gonna make a universe worth making.

Well. I'm here now. And I'm thinking about it. And... I guess I have a lot to think about. Things that the people before me couldn't have thought about, because they're what I'm thinking about. Because...

Because...

Because even if they didn't mean to -- even if it was just a bad series of cosmic coincidences -- their sacrifices had to be made. Because someone had to look at those sacrifices square in the eye and say, whoa. This thing's a big deal. Because it would be all too easy to rush in here and mess everything up if you didn't.

That's still a lot of pressure... but what was it Feldspar used to say? "Some Hearthians only thrive under pressure?" Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm one of them! But... I guess I haven't cracked yet.

Maybe the fact that I can't fit all this in my head at once is a good thing. Maybe someone like Chert would take everything in, but fit too much in their head at once, and panic and never get anything done. Or Gabbro would meditate and think on it, and take a nap about it, and meditate on it some more... and never really get up and do it. (Not without someone to give them a swift kick in the pants.)

I bet Riebeck could do it, though. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Everyone always gave them a lot of flak, but it's not like they're unreasonable for being scared in such a deadly solar system; frankly, the fact that they ever flew anywhere at all shows what guts they really have!

Meanwhile, the most anyone could really say about me is that I don't give up. Not a very noteworthy trait, especially among Hearthians. Heh. Maybe that's it. I'm so fundamentally unextraordinary that... I'm perfect.

...

I'm not sure if I'm actually any closer to finishing all this. I'm not sure if I've even started! Why does everything important always have to be so... abstract and cryptic? It's making my head feel fuzzy.

I could really do with something to listen to besides crickets. Not that I don't like you guys! You're perfect just the way you are. But I need something more. Maybe I can remember a radio or something.

...Heh. What an idiot I am. Here I am, at the end of everything, sitting in some... nowhere-place, where I could probably think up anything, and my first instinct is to think of a radio instead of a live performance. If I was chosen for anything, it must have been as a joke.

Still... I wouldn't mind the company. And I definitely wouldn't mind a song.

Any song would do... although, given the circumstances, I'd like a nice campfire song. It feels like it's been forever since I heard one... well, since I heard one that wasn't from the other travelers.

That one might just be perfect, though. If only I could remember how it goes...

...

...?

Do you hear music?