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Your name is Bug.
You are born into nothing.
The Universe chooses a world for you, as it does for everyone.
Your world is blank.
Completely.
Not the blankness of freedom, the blankness of blocks yet to be placed, the blankness of things yet to be built, the blankness of room to learn, to grow, to create, no.
This is the blankness of nothing .
Your name is Bug.
You are born into an empty white world.
You can see your hands when you hold them in front of you- pale skinned with black painted nails.
You can see your hoodie when you look down- green and moss-like (although you’ve never seen moss before, you know that is what it is, the same way you know your name is Bug).
You can see your shoes as you walk- black sneakers kicking up dust from somewhere, despite the ground below you being just as blank and white as the air in front of you face.
Your name is Bug, and you adapt.
It takes time, as everything does, but you are smart.
You learn to identify the world around you by sound and touch.
You build a house.
You don’t know if it looks good.
You don’t know what “good” looks like.
But you have built it and it is yours. It keeps the rain and the monsters and the cold out. It is a place for you to keep your belongings- because you amass a number of those. You like to explore and dig and collect anything new and exciting.
You don’t know how long you spend in limbo, how long you spend with nothing, but one day something changes.
Actually, if you thought about it in more depth (which you are loath to do), you would assume it had been changing very gradually, over a long stretch of time.
(And time does stretch, in this grand nothingness. But that is besides the point).
Your name is Bug, and suddenly you can see .
The world is bright. You thought the white was bright, but nothing could prepare you for colour.
The world around you is beautiful.
You spend days at a time looking at every flower, every tree, every rock, every animal. You learn all their names, finally put a visual to the things you had only felt or heard before.
The colours blend together, shifting and swirling, beautiful and overwhelming, especially when you look at things further away.
One day, you wake up and everything is different again.
Your name is Bug, and you can see everything .
The Universe must have smiled upon you, seeing you get so close to the freedom of sight, but falling at the final hurdle.
The world around you is beautiful.
(Your house is kind of ugly. The colours don’t really match, and some of the blocks you thought were the same turned out to be very different).
But you can see, and everything is wonderful.
—
Your name is Bug, and there is a portal outside of your house.
You did not put it there.
The sign on its frame is simple ( beautiful, bright ) birch wood.
[Your time here is over.]
[It is time to move on.]
Your name is Bug, and you step through the portal.
—
Your name is Bug and your life is full of patterns.
It takes you 300 days to figure it out in total. 300 days since you first spawned in that world of nothing.
The second world you end up in is difficult. The weather is awful, wind that rips crops from the ground and leaves your house in ruins if you build it out of anything less than stone.
The same portal appears, once you have spent a while getting acquainted with the stress of living in a world that works against you.
[Your time here is over.]
[It is time to move on.]
The phrasing sticks with you.
Time.
It’s an interesting thing.
The fact that there is a limited amount, if the signs are to be believed, is worrying.
Is it limited per world?
Or are you limited in total?
How many days do you get?
Your name is Bug, and you step through the portal into another world that hates you, and you decide to keep count.
(This world is cold. It is raining, the ground frozen over. Getting food is difficult, but you are nothing if not adaptable).
100 days.
That is how long it takes for the portal to appear again, with the same sign.
100 is a nice number, you think.
So you step through the portal and you keep count again.
100 days spent working with villagers, trading and doing tasks for them.
100 days spent in a swamp, nothing but murky water and terrifying creatures hiding in the fog.
100 days spent in literal hell, battling through fire and lava and horror.
100 days spent fighting in the ruins of a crumbled civilisation, hordes of undead everywhere.
100 days spent struggling through shattered mountains and floating islands.
800 days spent alone.
800 days spent building yourself up, learning the new rules, learning how to survive, only to have it all ripped away.
8 times starting from nothing.
8 worlds with no one but yourself to lean on.
—
Your name is Bug, and you are alone.
But that changes on the 9th world.
This world is cold again, the type of cold that makes you think you’ll never be warm again.
There is no land around you, nothing for you to cling to to escape the biting cold except for a few scraps of wood floating in the water.
It quickly becomes apparent that the wood comes from a building of some kind, although it is obviously no longer standing.
After a couple of nights spent floating adrift, you see a light.
It’s hard to control your direction, but you manage a little, paddling weakly towards it, the cold sapping the strength from your bones.
You eventually reach it and find a raft with a lamp on a pole attached to it.
And sat on the raft is a person.
They are hunched over, so still that at first you don’t think they are alive. They are wearing a big bulky green winter coat, green hair falling in front of their face as they stare down into the depths, a hand extended out as if they were reaching for something- or someone.
“Hello?” You call out to them. You don’t know how many days you have been here, you’ve had no way to keep track of the time short of self-mutilation, and you’re not desperate enough to resort to that yet. So you don’t know how long you have left, but making friends is always a good idea, no matter how limited the time may be.
They jolt, turning to look at you. At least, you assume they are looking at you. They have a pair of ski goggles covering their eyes, and a yellow scarf over the lower half of their face.
Looking at them feels wrong. It feels painful. It feels dangerous.
Your name is Bug, and you know without being told that you are at a point of no return.
“My name is Bug,” you introduce yourself, at a loss of anything else to do. “What are you doing out here?”
They move in a stiff, mechanical way, as if they have been still for a long time. The plank of wood you have considered your vessel bumps into theirs. You don’t move over, not wanting to invade their space, but they don’t push you away.
“I- There was a tower, and- and a castle- and a Jester- and the Jester went through a portal and everything started collapsing and the world flooded and- and I was with a friend but-” They cut themself off with a sob, looking down into the water again. “He sank! Because- Because this stupid game hates us and never lets both of us make it out, and it wasn’t his turn to die, it was mine , but he went down anyway and-”
They’re openly sobbing now, and you ignore the phantom feeling of cold water filling your lungs in favour of moving onto their raft, sitting down beside them.
“A game? What do you mean? And also, sorry, who are you?”
“Sorry, sorry,” They sniffle, composing themself a little. “My name is Geck. My friend Mikey and I, we’re like adventurers, I guess. We keep coming back to this castle, and getting separated and trapped inside, and then we have to talk through our radios to solve puzzles together and find the way out, except one of us always fucking dies , and then we come back and do it all over again, I guess. I don’t know why I thought this time would be any different, but we were doing so well , and we thought this would be the last time, I thought we were finally done -”
You frown at this information.
“Why do you keep coming back, if it gets you killed?”
Geck laughs, a humourless sound. “Because the Editors want us to. And it’s fun, I guess. It’s entertaining. The Editors certainly think so. And we like the adventure, and the puzzles. Could go without the death, but maybe next time we’ll get lucky.”
“And the Editors control your lives? Does everyone have an editor?”
They shake their head. “No, not everyone does. And those who do don’t always know, so it’s usually best not to bring it up. Usually the Editors are separate, they don’t interact with their characters. But Mikey was always aware of his Editor, would talk to him sometimes. I don’t know if he ever spoke back. I don’t think the Editors had much control of our story, other than sending us back to the castle. But I guess other Editors do different things. I don’t know.”
Your name is Bug, and you have passed the point of no return.
“I think I have an Editor,” You blurt. You don’t get struck down for saying it, but you think the sea gets rougher. Maybe you’re just making that up though. “I’ve been moving between worlds, I get to stay there for 100 days, and then a portal appears with a sign saying my time has run out, and then I move on to the next world.”
Geck wraps an arm around you, pulling you close. You’d almost forgotten how cold it is. Or maybe you’re just unable to feel the temperature any more. A hoodie certainly isn’t appropriate protection from the elements, especially with no resources to make it any better.
“That sounds like an editor to me. It’s rare for them to communicate. Maybe you could try and talk to them? Demand an audience maybe. They don’t always like to listen, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Maybe.”
Your name is Bug, and you are tired.
On the surface level, yes, the cold is seeping into your bones, sapping your strength and your energy until it feels like anvils are tied to your eyelashes. Geck isn’t much warmer on the outside, but their coat is thick and comfy, so you lean your head on their shoulder. They don’t oppose it, holding you close as the two of you fall silent.
But deeper down, you are tired in a way that sleep and warmth won’t fix.
You’re nearing 900 days- 900 days with nothing to show for it. No home. No friends. No family.
Your name is Bug, and you are tired of having nothing.
Your name is Bug, and you are tired of being nothing.
You fall into nothingness at one point, finally overcome with cold. You realise, absently, that this is the first time you’ve failed. You know in your heart that you have not made it to 100, and that that means failure.
You think that if you had to fail, then this is the best way to fail.
Drifting into oblivion with your first friend.
(You’re not sure what makes someone a friend, but Geck is the only person you’ve ever known, so that must count for something).
—
When you open your eyes, you are somewhere peaceful.
It looks closest to your first world, the one you hadn’t been allowed to see until the very end.
You are at the edge of a grassy plain, with a forest of oak and birch nearby. There are flowers around you, in many beautiful colours, a slight breeze making the flowers sway.
You look up, and the sky is missing.
It hurts to look at, the world shifting at the edges, glitching and fuzzy, giving way to something that is too much .
You can’t find the words to describe it, it is just so viscerally wrong .
It’s like when you first got your glasses and the world was no longer blurry, except these new visuals are almost too high quality for your brain to process, more than perfect, more than photo-realistic.
The wind picks up, and you watch as the thing in the sky moves .
It’s a person, or part of a person.
You can see its mouth and chin, the top of its face lost in the clouds. Its neck and shoulders are visible too, the rest of its torso hidden behind the trees, as if it is standing below the horizon line, looming over the entire world.
“Hello Bug. It’s nice to finally meet you.” The wind picks up more, urging you to step closer. “I am the Editor, and you are growing far too curious.”
It speaks in your voice, and you know you will never be the same again.
—
Your name is Mikey, Achilles, Claude, Ophelia, Pebble, Flea, The King, Mordre, Claude, Caligula, Titus, Nero, The Ringmaster, Astraea, Willow, Oriana, Frankie, J0S3PH, Mieszko, Wisp, Jonah, Esmé, Bug.
Your name is Bug, and you remember everything .