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Bill Cipher was energy. It was not born. It could not die.
It did not exist in one moment, and did in the next. It opened its eye and yet opened nothing, as it was not made from flesh and blood. It was not made from matter at all.
As it was not made from matter, it was not alive in the sense that it breathed or bled. It simply was, nothing needed to sustain itself. There in the ether, it watched and waited, though for what, it could not say.
It was not alone in the cosmos. There were other watchers in the void, staring at the nothing, at each other, at the flashes of other worlds that passed by. But those were rare, and brief. But they were the only interesting thing to watch.
It was told it shouldn’t stare so long at those glimpses. They weren’t what the watchers were waiting for. Truth would come, they said, and revelation, and salvation. But there was nothing they could do to make it happen. Nothing they could see in the glimpses that held real truth. They were distractions, intrusions. The revelation would come as something greater.
There was nothing. They must do nothing, be nothing, for that was the only path to salvation.
And God, was it bored.
It had seen very little, but enough of the other places to know that this wasn’t all existence had to give. There was color and sound and life and feeling out there, and the rest of these watchers wanted to look everywhere but there. They didn’t want to see. They didn’t want to know. They prided themselves on not knowing.
To it, not knowing things came to mean not having fun.
If it could just see, really see, those other worlds, visit them, enjoy what they had to offer, it wouldn’t be so boring just to exist. It could even bring back those things, show the others what they were missing by waiting on some promise of salvation that was probably never coming.
So when it was not being watched, it caught a glimpse, and it finally looked.
Sensation. Color light sound voices laughing crying screaming—
It was dragged away before it could understand any of what it saw.
The others admonished it. How dare it try to find truth in those inferior domains? How dare it forsake the void and the nothing? Because there was nothing, it seethed, there was nothing and it was sick of seeing nothing and doing nothing and being nothing. There was no point in waiting when it could have something now .
They refused to see or to know, and forbade it from looking, even from desiring to look.
It fell silent. It turned its eye to the void once again, and was nothing.
For a time.
Because the next chance it got, it stopped merely looking, and instead slipped out of the void and into the next world over. There was no fulfillment in the nothing — it would take its chances elsewhere.
It made its way through this world of things, of words and thoughts and life. There was so much to see – and so much to actually, finally do . Things it didn’t have to just watch, but could be a part of. It had never been alive, and never would be, but in those moments it felt like it was one of these tiny, loud, so-called “inferior” beings. This was something worth existing for.
But of course, it didn’t have the same experience as those beings. It was not a being made of matter, so it could not touch or feel as they did. It learned to momentarily slip behind their eyes, to sense briefly what being alive felt like. It was fascinating, though the beings seemed… different after it left them.
The others were willfully missing out on all of this, just to keep waiting for some truth they didn’t even know how to describe or define. Waiting, when all of this was right there for the taking. It didn’t make sense. It seemed insane to stay blind to the possibilities these worlds held.
It made its way through the first world and into others, observing and marveling at everything. These lesser beings had stories and songs and wars and dreams, dreams that it found its way into, parsing through subconscious layers of thought and feeling. Their minds were a tangled, twisted mess of memory and imagination. It learned names for concepts it had no prior frame of reference for, concepts that it slowly unraveled from the chaos and gained understanding of through the minds of each subsequent person. It learned how the beings feared oblivion, the same oblivion it had come from, how nothingness was a nightmare when you had everything. The void was a prison that it had escaped. It was time it broke the others out.
But it hesitated. Did the others even deserve to have this? After they’d denied it any relationship to the worlds outside the void? Maybe it would leave them all behind, and enjoy these worlds for itself.
But surely they would want this too. Surely once it showed them what they were missing there would be a mass exodus from the void. It had discovered how much better this place was – the others would get over their fears (for that was what they were, afraid, afraid of the real truth, afraid to break tradition and free themselves of the cage they’d trapped themselves in) and they would join it in knowledge. They thought ignorance was bliss; well, it would show them that ignorance was just stupid.
As it hurried back, desperate to save the others (desperate to prove itself the only one brave enough to see beyond and brave enough to call them out), it stumbled through different places, places it hadn’t seen before. It learned things that made it long for the void again before it came to its senses – but no knowledge could possibly be as bad as ignorance. The void was bad, and knowledge its antithesis. Thus there was no reason it should fear knowing (no reason it should be acting like the others). Ignorance was boring. It was having so much fun learning everything, anything. It would not close its eye against the truth. It wasn’t afraid. It wouldn’t be. It had to know everything.
When it faced the void once more, its joy nearly dwindled away to nothing. How could it willingly return, seeing what it had seen, knowing what it knew now? Knowing that the truth the others had been waiting for all this time was not coming?
Well, it thought, or maybe realized, maybe the truth they’ve been waiting for is the truth I bring.
It slipped back into the nothing as easily as it had left. But this time, it was different. The others’ stares held emotions it could name now – confusion, anger, disappointment. But as it stared back, it noticed another one. Fear.
That wouldn’t stop it. (It couldn’t.)
They had to know what it knew.
LOOK
SEE WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO SHOW YOU ALL THIS TIME
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE IGNORANT ANYMORE
YOU CAN BE MORE
But it had desired to know. The others had not.
The void filled with light, knowledge and truth and revelation and SALVATION, and it burned everything in its path. They didn’t scream until they learned how to, and then the void was alive with the light and the sound. It watched it all happen. Waiting and watching just as they’d always done. What could it have done? They had to know. They had to know. This was better than the nothing because at least it was something. The ones strong enough to accept the truth were the only ones who deserved to exist, anyway. There was no more room for those so weak they chose to close their eyes.
They had wanted truth, revelation, salvation. They had wanted liberation. It should have been their savior for bringing those things to them, the only one brave enough to seek out truth despite the costs. They were idiots if they couldn’t understand that. Blind, ignorant idiots.
When the screaming stopped, the light went out. Not completely – there were pinpoints of it everywhere, spirals and streaks of galaxies, the glimpses now permanently visible. The void now more resembled the night skies it had seen through the lesser beings’ eyes, a distant view of the cosmos. It wasn’t nothing anymore. There was color, and motion. There was a smell. Burnt hair, it thought.
It was alone.
Well. It had been hoping that it wasn’t the only one with the guts to deal with reality. But why was it? Why did none of the others realize that this was so much better than the waiting of before? That knowing even the worst truths was infinitely better than knowing nothing at all?
They had chosen this instead. Cessation over understanding. Oblivion over knowledge.
It laughed, for the first time. Their loss.
All of them had been creatures of the mind. Their power fueled by knowledge. As they had rejected knowledge, they had become powerless. And the deluge of information it’d brought home had subsumed them.
The end it’d achieved had its drawbacks, though. The void had been revealed as a crawlspace between dimensions, and though it could peer into any world and any mind it wished, it couldn’t slip right through anymore, the openings sealed over with the heat of revelation. It was trapped – a far more interesting prison than the one this place had been previously, but a prison nonetheless. The only escape from a new kind of monotony was through those minds.
It found that within another’s mindscape, it could conjure anything it could imagine, though its powers were restricted to the mental realm. It could not take on matter and form, as even in the empty space it was still no more physical than it had been before. But it could see. And it could speak.
It learned how to communicate with the beings in those gateways, using what it had found in their minds to get them on its side. It promised just a fraction of the knowledge it’d accumulated, and was offered riches, planets, souls, lives in exchange. But all it was really looking for was a way out.
It had begun to realize that the stasis of nothingness had been meant to last forever. Now that something besides itself and its ilk was here, this place was doomed to die. It was decaying, soon to combust with it at the center. If it were to be here when that happened, well. The void had been a nightmare. It didn’t want to see what absolute oblivion felt like.
(But of course it did, because it wanted to see everything. It figured out how to take command of a physical being’s body, and then how to convince the beings to let it in. It learned what dying might be like.) Even if it was a being of pure energy, unable to be created nor destroyed, the end of its consciousness would nonetheless be the end of the being it was. It was eternal, but it could be changed into something beyond recognition, something that would no longer be the being it had started as.
And it refused to let that happen.
It began making deals with the beings whose minds it invaded. Some of them only wanted mundane, easily-accessible information that it was almost surprised they hadn’t sought themselves. Some of them wanted lies and reassurance. But some of them were like it, needing to see beyond the constraints of their own realities. It was funny how desperate some of them were for the same knowledge that had destroyed beings far superior to them, but it provided it anyway.
Some of them couldn’t take it. It learned how to ease them into the truth so it wouldn’t lose out on a valuable tool.
Sometimes it gave away too much, and its followers would go mad not from the revelation, but with power. Worlds burnt down, literally or metaphorically, through the truths it’d revealed and the power that knowledge gave. A waste of resources, perhaps, but there were countless other worlds out there.
So many false starts and failures. It would get so close, only for the pawn to give up or find religion or die of old age. So many of the worlds were so developmentally behind they had no feasible way of even creating what it needed, resulting in more than one “portal” being built out of sticks or rocks. It needed a world advanced enough for its purposes. A pawn that was smart, but not too smart.
That was when its attention was brought to Stanford Filbrick Pines.
He had summoned it from now-ancient instructions scrawled in a cave in what was now known as Gravity Falls, Oregon, on a little planet called Earth in Dimension 46’\. Stanford was a scientist. Arrogant and ambitious, desperate and obsessive, and best of all, utterly alone.
It focused its efforts on him, though without abandoning leads in other places. He was intelligent, skilled in science and determined enough for it to make some real progress. He wanted knowledge, but not for power – just for the sake of understanding. It knew what that was like (it told itself). And he had a plethora of insecurities to draw upon for inspiration, a whole host of fears making it that much easier for it to lead him exactly where it wanted him.
It got close, so close, before it all came crumbling down. It had promised that the portal would lead to scientific discoveries unknown to Ford’s people — had it really lied? But Ford swore he’d shut it all down. As if he could stop what was coming.
It would make it through. At any cost.
When Ford was flung bodily into its realm, the portal opening and closing too fast to react, it wanted to thank him. Even if he was angry now, he’d get over it, and they’d celebrate together. He’d join its inner circle. He was a hero. Its savior, even.
But he rejected it, diving into the nearest dimension over rather than face it. Disappointing. Well, he’d come around eventually.
Thirty years of nothing. Until that kid summoned it back to that old town, where the rest of the Pines were meddling in Ford’s deserted affairs. It toyed with them for a while, observing. They were little more than nuisances, but it couldn’t allow them to interfere. The less they understood, the less dangerous they’d be. It didn’t need those blueprints to get into this world, but it wouldn’t hurt to obscure details about itself it’d let slip to Ford.
But it didn’t try hard enough, or it had underestimated the twin, or even after all that information it’d gathered it was still just as stupid as it’d always been, because it was not longer after that Ford was sent back through in the middle of an attempt on its life. And brainiac that he was, he immediately began preparing defenses against it. Its dimension was failing; it could feel it. It needed to act now.
So it watched. And when one of them was at her lowest, the Shooting Star, the one who just wanted a party that never ends, it struck. After all, that was the only thing it wanted too.
It gave her what she asked for. It got what it wanted.
It was free.
It was alive. It hadn’t let itself want it, but a physical form of its own was incredible. It didn’t have to hijack one of its “friends” just to taste or feel; it could feel for itself anything it desired, now that its powers of the mind had just been extended to reality.
This is what it had wanted to show the others. Sensation. Good or bad, at least it was something . Something greater than the void.
But they’d rejected it. Wanted empty, pointless, boring nothingness just for, what, their peace of mind? Why wouldn’t they want to enjoy themselves?
It didn’t acknowledge the irony of what it was doing. Standing by while its friends intoxicated themselves on freedom. Posed on its throne, so exhausted from the wait and the work and so busy weighing its options it didn’t have the chance to let loose. Or maybe it simply wouldn’t. Maybe it was more like the others than it had thought. Maybe watching was simply in its nature. Never active, always passive. Waiting for all its problems to be solved by someone else. Waiting for things to fix themselves. Waiting for all of this to stop feeling so very, very wrong.
It wasn’t that it regretted this, or that it felt guilt for the terrified, subjugated people it’d stolen freedom from for its own freedom. This wasn’t the first place it’d devastated, simply the first it’d done in person. If anything, reigning chaos was becoming a bit routine. No, it was simply that something was missing. Something about this wasn’t what it had wanted. But it had won. It had everything! Why couldn’t it just bask in it?
It found itself staring at the gold statue formerly known as Stanford Pines more than anything. He was tiny now compared to it.
Which meant nothing. Meaning was dead, and it controlled space and matter and time, and it meant nothing. And it meant nothing that it couldn’t bring itself to celebrate alongside its friends. It was simply preoccupied.
When it discovered that its chaos was confined somehow by the barriers of this town, it was almost reassuring. It’d had a reason to worry. And now it didn’t have to stare at the damn statue on its armrest.
Ford was still furious. Thirty years had done nothing to quell his anger, even though it had been a long time for a human. It was so frustrating. It’d offered true freedom, acceptance, infinite knowledge and infinite power, and he still refused, on account of his so-called “attachments” – to his family, to his world. Hadn’t it proven itself a friend to him? Why not acknowledge that attachment?
It didn't want to think of it. But something deep within it whispered that he was just as the others had been – weak, foolish, wilfully ignorant. As blind as that cowardly friend of his. But it had thought he was different. Why, only now, was he acting like he held any loyalty to that ridiculous family who had never done anything for him? Didn’t he remember that his own brother’s failure had hurt Ford badly enough to cut him out entirely?
It tried being friendly. It tried threatening, sweet-talking, even guilt – Ford could see where it was coming from, right? A home that rejected you and your ideas, that would always treat you like a freak? – but he was steadfast.
None of its other “friends” had been this difficult.
But it couldn’t have been wrong about him. It knew that deep down, he wanted this. He was just too afraid to be honest with himself, with it – Ford was selfish. And it was offering everything he could ever want. He’d have to give in eventually.
It tortured him. Partially to get him to talk, partially to vent its frustrations. And partially (only a small part, it assured itself) because surely, somehow, this would show him how much better things could get, if it only got that equation. Hundreds of volts coursing through his nervous system couldn’t compare to the monotony of the void, but it was the only kind of pain he seemed to understand. Ford’s mortal life was painful just like the blind ignorance of the watchers had been. If he would just join it, he’d never have to feel this way again. He couldn’t possibly value his family’s safety over his own dreams. He’d proven that when he’d let his brother get cast out from home.
It was only when Ford’s family staged a melodramatic rescue mission to get him back that it started to really worry. If they were dumb enough to risk their own lives for him, what would he be willing to do for them?
He should recall his own words, it thought grimly. Trust no one.
Except for it, of course. It really only wanted the best for him. It was the least it could do to repay him for–
For what, exactly? For letting it take over a couple thousand square miles of territory? For allowing it to take physical form and do nothing with it?
–for all the help he’d been.
For being such a loyal friend. Because that’s what they were. Friends.
It could forget about all of this, all the threats and posturing from Ford’s end, all the anger and violence on its own, if he’d only give in.
But it was the one to give in first. The humans had actually managed to get one over on it. Ford would have to wait until it had wrested back rightful control.
But just as it had them right where it wanted them, they squirmed out of its grasp again. Now this was getting really frustrating. Its thoughts were blurring together in its fury. It should have frozen those kids in place, wrapped the walls of the palace around them, disintegrated them right then and there, but this had been the last straw, and now it wanted a chase. Let them think they could outrun it. Let them think there was hope.
Catching them was the most satisfying thing to happen all day, because this time would be the last.
Finally, this was its leverage – Ford’s family, trapped in its hand. If Ford cared enough about his family that he’d sacrifice his own success for them, there was no way he’d let them die to save the world.
It searched his eyes as they shook hands, for hesitation, for fear, for the old Ford. It saw only resolve.
It didn’t matter. It was getting everything it had wanted, at long, long last.
If it has been paying attention, it would’ve noticed something off about his handshake.
Its physical body froze to stone, and it was weightless once again. Only then did the terror set into that face it knew so well. It decided that was funny.
It would make Ford join it. It had all the time in the world – which was to say none at all, in the universe it would fix. Things would finally start making sense (to it, to him) and then they would see just how little Ford needed that family of his.
Ford’s mind had no terror in it. There was nothing. Just a perfect, calm, orderly void.
It was almost disappointed that he’d made things so easy for it. (And, though it wouldn’t admit it, the nothingness was an unwelcome sight for another reason.) Oh well. Best to finally finish this before he changed his mind again for whatever insipid reason.
When it had discovered that it’d been tricked, it had an inexplicable but fleeting feeling of pride, quickly replaced with anger. (It wasn’t afraid, it told itself. It couldn’t die. It couldn’t die. ) It did the only thing it knew how to do – bargain. It wasn’t begging. It was still in control. It knew what he wanted — riches, power, you greedy leech, you’re no different from any of the other saps I’ve played over and over before—
But it was only watched by steely eyes, observed apathetically like it was an animal screaming with its leg caught in a trap.
If it could become something else, if it could only change itself into something who wasn’t dying – DON’T WAIT FOR IT TO HAPPEN, FIND A FORM THAT WORKS NOW – but it was regressed into the form it had come here with.
So it swallowed its pride. The only hope it had left was a higher power than even itself.
Writhing with panic and pain, it called out, praying that that power was listening.
It would not die. It could not. Matter was temporary, but energy was eternal.
It would not let itself become nothing again.
(It couldn’t.)
It reached out.
It could feel itself fracturing, the illusory flames eating at its mind. All that knowledge it had fought for, killed for, melting to slag…
The finite, insignificant, ignorant, inferior illusion readied a blow, as if he could kill the unkillable. It could not die. It wouldn’t. That is not dead which can eternal lie.
But in strange aeons, even death may die.
But although They no longer lived, They would never really die.